'Miss Scarlet' Sits Out Most of a Delightful "The Delivery"

Actor Ansu Kabia makes his long-awaited return to Miss Scarlet in “The Delivery,” an hour that puts his fan-favorite character firmly in the spotlight — and the show’s leading lady in the proverbial backseat, with surprisingly delightful results. 

We should probably get it out of the way early: “The Delivery” is a weird episode. Not weird bad, to be clear. But it’s really not the kind of story this show usually tells. In fact, Miss Scarlet has never done this kind of episode before, one in which the show’s main character barely appears. Instead, Miss Scarlet also turns its focus to a pair of beloved supporting figures, and the result is something that’s more entertaining than much of the show in quite some time.

(If you’re a Doctor Who fan, you’re already familiar with these kinds of installments. Whovians call them “Doctor lite” episodes, and they’re frequently used when the show’s lead is busy filming another episode or project or when the series wants to give one of its secondary characters a chance to shine. See also: Season 3’s “Blink” and Season 4’s “Turn Left” or, more recently, Season 15’s “Lucky Day”.)

We haven’t seen Kabia’s Moses Valentine since Season 3, a slick petty criminal with a charmingly swaggering attitude, a willingness to skirt the law to achieve his own ends, and a genuine affection for Eliza. The pair frequently worked together when she needed information from less savory sources than Scotland Yard could provide. But the character departed at the end of the show’s third season to help open a Paris branch of Patrick Nash’s (Felix Scott) detective agency. Now, Moses is back because he needs Eliza’s help — or, more specifically, he needs her boyfriend’s help — to stay out of jail. 

In “The Delivery,” Eliza’s presence is used as more of a framing device, as she drops an incredibly obvious hint in the hour’s opening moments before stepping back into the picture to provide an answer to the mystery of a missing diamond at the end, Hercule Poirot-style. In a season that is, at least ostensibly, meant to show us how Eliza’s learning to balance her personal and professional selves, it’s a strange choice to exile her from a sixth of it.

(Maybe Kate Phillips had to film Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light? We’ll likely never know.)

Essentially a Patrick Nash episode in which Patrick Nash never actually appears, the story catches us up on our favorite rogue investigator's antics since the last time we saw him. Abandoning his trip to Australia halfway through, Nash has been everywhere from Madagascar to Singapore before finally ending up in Venezuela, where he has apparently acquired a diamond mind. (Yes, really. No, it doesn’t make any sense.) Because his life is somehow truly hashtag-blessed despite all the various crimes he’s committed, Nash almost immediately discovers a massive diamond on the site, a whopper clocking in at 100 carats. He’s having it sent to London to sell, and he wants Moses and Clarence to team up to help make it happen.

Teaming up Eliza’s former right-hand man with her new one is an unexpected choice, but one that ultimately works out thanks to the fantastic chemistry between Kabia and Paul Bazely. Moses and Clarence start out fairly suspicious of and rude toward one another — there’s a weird jealousy vibe that stems from their shared relationship with Nash, and a competitive streak that comes from them both wanting to be in charge. But hijinks inevitably ensue when they’re forced to join forces with Nash’s business partner, Florence Dodds (Cordelia Bugeja), a widow charged with bringing the diamond to England. 

What follows is a story of attempted theft, dangerous Dutch gangs, and fake diamonds that isn’t as interesting as the show wants it to be, but is more interesting if I don’t explain it in detail to you right now. Essentially a shell game where the false and real gems are swapped around multiple times, it’s all an elaborate scheme to keep the diamond from being stolen long enough for it to be sold. Along the way, secrets about Florence’s real identity are revealed, Nash and Moses develop a begrudging respect and camaraderie, and the gem earns everyone a tidy payday, which maybe means everyone is rich enough now that Eliza won’t have to worry about taking jobs from the Yard to survive if she doesn’t want to. 

As usual with Miss Scarlet these days, the actual mystery isn’t all that exciting in terms of the specifics of the story. But Kabia and Bazely make for fairly hilarious scene partners, and their escapades opposite Bugeja’s Florence are genuinely entertaining in a way that feels like a throwback to earlier seasons of the show, when characters like Eliza, William, Nash, and Moses all worked together to solve cases. (It’s been a minute since this show simply remembered how to be fun, and if nothing else, I’m grateful to this episode for that reason alone.) 

But while the ultimate big reveal at the end of the episode will surely create a few ScarNash shippers, it’s also…. a kind of cop-out. Look, anyone who’s ever watched a mystery series probably felt their ears perk up immediately the minute Eliza talked about taking a trip to the seaside to visit a relative, given that she’s never mentioned any family members beyond her father, ever. The revelation that she actually snuck off to meet Nash, who’d brought the real diamond to England to give to her while leaving Moses and Clarence to chase fakes and dodge danger all over London, well…it’s a very Nash-like move.

But it’s a twist that it's not clear is really worth it in the end — except if you’re a ScarNash shipper, I suppose — because it means that we see very little of Moses and Eliza together, and after multiple seasons, it’s okay to be a little bit annoyed about that, no matter how great he and Clarence turned out to be together. Here’s hoping it’s a mistake the rest of the season will somehow have a chance to correct. 

Miss Scarlet Season 6 continues with new episodes airing and streaming on local PBS stations and the PBS app on Sundays at 8 p.m. ET through mid-February 2026. All episodes are available to stream on PBS Passport for members and on the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel.