This script has been lightly edited for clarity.

Jace Lacob: I’m Jace Lacob, and you’re listening to MASTERPIECE Studio.

For Eliza Scarlet, Season Four has been a whirlwind of beginnings and endings, highs and lows. Patrick Nash appointed her Chief Investigator at the London branch of Nash & Sons, only to have all but one of her employees quit. Her beloved friend and colleague William “The Duke” Wellington was shot and fell into a coma, but miraculously regained consciousness while Eliza was at his bedside. And perhaps most significantly this season, The Duke finally expressed his feelings for Eliza. And yet, it’s because of these feelings that he feels he must leave London for New York. 

CLIP

William: If we are to be together, then I cannot remain at Scotland Yard with you a private detective. Nor can I be around you anymore without being with you.  

Somehow, despite all of these events, or perhaps because of them, Eliza has managed to stay intently focused on her work. But with Wellington gone, she’ll have to make some adjustments if she wants to stay in the sleuthing business. 

CLIP

Nash: What I’m about to say you may not like. In fact, you definitely won’t like it.

Eliza: Oh, then perhaps you shouldn’t say it.

Nash: The work you’ve had up until now from Scotland Yard has been on account of your friendship with inspector Wellington.

Eliza: I secured that work because I’m good at what I do.

Nash: And I’m not disputing that, but the fact remains, your friendship helped a great deal. But now Phelps is in charge and he’s not obliged to tolerate you.

Eliza: Tolerate me?

Nash: Do you want this business to flourish under your command or not?

Eliza: Yes, of course I do.

Nash: Then make it your business to get along with Phelps. And would you please stop sulking?

Eliza: For the last time, I do not sulk!

Nash: Good because my mother was a sulker and it brings back bad memories.

(both laugh)

Meanwhile, Nash has his own demons to contend with this season. Demons that push him far past the point of professionalism, and into the realm of vengeance. 

CLIP

Nash: My brother was the sweetest, kindest soul you could ever meet. The only family I had left. And he took him from me!

Eliza: If you kill him in cold blood, you are no better than he is.

Nash: Get out of my way.

Eliza: This will be murder Patrick! You will hang!

Nash: Get out of my way!

Eliza: No! Patrick please do not do this! If not for yourself, then for me.

As Season Four comes to a close, Eliza finally hangs her own shingle and steps out of the shadows cast by her father, Nash, and the Duke. We’re left with a shot of her office building with the freshly painted sign, “Miss Eliza Scarlet, Private Detective.” This week, writers and spouses Rachael New & Ben Edwards join us again to discuss the end of Season Four, and what these huge shifts might mean for Eliza and the show going forward.

Jace Lacob: This week I am joined once again by Miss Scarlet and The Duke writers and producers Rachael New and Ben Edwards. Welcome.

Ben Edwards: Hello. Hi, Jace.

Rachael New: Hello, Jace.

Jace Lacob: So, series four of Miss Scarlet and The Duke ends up being quite a transformative season. Eliza begins by running a branch of Patrick Nash’s investigative business but ends up going her own way. Moses is gone, Nash is awaiting trial, the Duke departs for a secondment in America. When breaking this series, did it feel like it would provide a launch pad for a different direction for the show?

Rachael New: Absolutely. We try and keep every season as fresh as possible, and we do try and push the boundaries as much as possible. But there were so many threads to wind and weave. So, we had an awful lot of ideas for this season. It was a fantastic season to storyline.

Ben Edwards: And I think also this is the “be careful what you wish for” season, isn’t it? At the start, it does seem like she has everything she wanted; she’s got proper staff, she’s running an agency, she’s the first woman to be, not just the first female detective, but now the first woman to be running a successful agency. And then of course, you know, who wants to watch a drama where everything goes well for your characters? So, of course everything starts going wrong. And I think we were very pleased that she manages to, at the end of it, to both have a success, but also a setback, but also be poignant.

Rachael New: I think with Eliza, what’s really beautiful and relatable to lots of people that enjoy the show is, she often never quite gets the thing that she wants, but she keeps going and gets a slightly different triumph. And that’s what we wanted this time. It’s like, yes, it didn’t work out for her, as Ben says, be careful what you wish for, but in the end, she’s back where she belongs, and she’s determined to make a go of it. So, it felt like there was a victory there, but it had some real meaning and depth to it.

Ben Edwards: And I think, I can’t remember this exactly, at what point did we think the final image was going to be her name over the door? I think that was relatively early on.

Rachael New: It was very early on, yeah.

Jace Lacob: I was going to ask that, because to me, it is the perfect way to end this series. It seems to set up a future that is one of true independence for Eliza, who now has no male partner in either Nash, or Wellington, or her father; she’s hung out her own shingle, quite literally, above the door. And I was curious whether that was a final image that you had decided early on, because the entire season worked so well to get to that point.

Ben Edwards: I think it was and I think we would have thought of that while we were story lining because of what it gives us, because you maintain the integrity of the show. Sometimes as well you just eradicate the things that are going to change the show too much. So, for example, if she’d taken over Nash’s business, and it went brilliantly, and she was hailed as a genius, and then she opens 10 other places, Nash Sons, and then she was suddenly the most successful detective in London, it suddenly becomes a very different show. But at the same time, it’s an optimistic show, you want the sense that she’s making some progress. I can’t remember who thought of it. I’m going to say it was you.

Rachael New: Probably. I’m the one generally that comes up with all the amazing ideas.

Ben Edwards: Exactly. And I just type them up.

Jace Lacob: It is significant because Eliza has been really reliant on the men in her life for her role as a private investigator, either relying on William’s Scotland Yard connections for cases or being handed the keys to an office and a staff, as you say, by Nash. Is it both terrifying and freeing for Eliza to then be able to position herself as a woman in this role with that front and center over the door?

Ben Edwards: Yeah, I think so. But also, by the end of season four, we can assume that she has a reputation in that industry and therefore she will get some work. Whereas had she done that at the end of the pilot episode, yeah, no one would have come in. But I think that by now she has to have enough confidence about herself that she’s going to be okay. But again, it’s the thing of making things difficult for her while still giving her some kind of victory. We wanted the optimism, but also the realism, that she can’t just keep running someone else’s business.

Rachael New: And that’s when she’s at her best as well, when she’s really up against the wall. And there was something very poignant, I think, in this season about her relationship with Patrick Nash as well, because they do become really firm friends. And she’s really devastated at how things have turned out, not just for the business, but also for him. It just occurred to me, actually, I actually think that that last shot we’ve talked about before, even this season, I think we’ve talked about that over the years as well, for Eliza to eventually have her name over the door.

Jace Lacob: I mean, it does feel in some way with that image that you’ve made good on the series’ initial premise on this ambitious woman seizing her independence in a man’s world and actually taking it in a way that has taken her four series to get to, it does pay this off quite beautifully.

Rachael New: Yeah, and it’s really beautifully directed actually. I’ll give you something nice for the fans that Mr. Hill, at the end, who’s painting the front of her agency, sorry, painting the sign, that’s the director of that episode.

Ben Edwards: Is that Milos?

Jace Lacob: Oh, that’s amazing.

Rachael New: Yeah, so, he was determined to be in it.

MIDROLL

Jace Lacob: Now this final episode pays due Nash’s backstory, which is first mentioned in series three’s “Hotel St Marc” involving the murder of his brother. And at the time, it seemed as though the devilish Nash could be manipulating Eliza, but he is telling the truth. We get the full story. How important was it that you tie up Nash’s revenge plot here?

Ben Edwards: Well, it was an interesting thing because as always, there are a lot of things that we write along the way that we don’t necessarily know we’re going to come back to. So, in the hotel episode, when we were writing that, what we wanted out of that scene was, there’s more to Nash than meets the eye. That yes, he could be a liar but also in that moment there’s something vulnerable about him and you see a different side to him because we wanted to progress Eliza and Nash’s friendship. And we were always determined that they would be friends, that he’d be a part of her life, but it would never be a romance because weirdly, even though he’s a liar and a rogue and all of those things, he’s always there for her and he’s helped her almost more than anybody.

So, we wrote that scene really just to say there’s more depth to him than you might think. And then when we were coming to season four, Eliza is running Nash and Sons, things start going wrong. Then by the end, at the start of this final episode, things seem to be going well. And then I think we just looked at it and thought, well, who could make things not go well for her? Who could cause a conflict? And we thought, well, Nash, maybe Nash does something. And that’s when the richness of the canon, if I can say canon, of the show, then you go, oh, hey, what if he starts trying to avenge his brother’s murder? So, we sort of built from that.

And again, this goes back to that same thing of Rachael and I sitting in our kitchen, breaking stories, writing down one-line things here or there, and then sometimes they take off and you start building on them and you have an episode. And other times, they’re little cul-de-sacs that go nowhere.

Rachael New: We also quite like, I think we’ve done it with most of our season finales, is that the stakes always seem a little higher when it’s our regular cast who are really in the throes of the action. So that was something that felt really natural as well, that the case that week for the end, the season finale, is Nash. Because as I say, it does raise the stakes. There’s more personal investment for Eliza and the rest of the crew. So that felt like definitely the right way to go for us.

Jace Lacob: I love the scene in the cell between Eliza and Nash. It’s emotional, it’s playful, it’s bittersweet.

CLIP

Eliza: Patrick—

Nash: I know what you think.

Eliza: What, that you look terrible?

Nash: That I’m going to prison for some time. But you’re wrong. I know several good lawyers. And a couple of high court judges too. There’s every chance this will be just a temporary setback. We’ll be back on course before you know it. With my good looks and your brains. You don’t believe me, do you? Don’t answer that.

Jace Lacob: How would you describe the rapport between these two and, and between Kate Phillips and Felix Scott?

Ben Edwards: Well, I think, yeah, between the two characters, obviously, Kate and Felix, they absolutely nail it and bring out more than is on the page and it is wonderful. In terms of the characters, we always liked the idea of this sort of odd relationship that, at first, he’s a rival, when you first see him, and she rebuffs him. So, in season two, he says, oh, you seem good, come and work for me. And she says, absolutely no way. And then there’s a rivalry where we play him as a bit of a sort of bad guy.

But I think we always thought that for all his faults, he’s a very practical person and he doesn’t care that she’s a woman. What he cares about is she’s really good and she can benefit his business. So that’s an unusual mentor to have in that respect, because you know how sometimes the good guys can be boring, so therefore the fact that he’s got something about him that he can simultaneously be a liar and a cheat, but also want Eliza to do well, we always liked that. And then from her point of view, she sort of resents the fact that actually he might be trying to help her. And he is unreliable, and he does lie and that’s why I think that the season three hotel episode was a big turning point for both of them, which is to get them to the point where at the end, they are friends.

Rachael New: Yeah, I think we don’t see that enough in dramas, platonic friendships. I think they’re really special. I’ve got some really special platonic friendships as has Ben. And it was really important that, you know, it’s not always about love with her. She can have this friendship with this man, and it is just a friendship. He respects her, he admires her. It’s always been about that really. And he doesn’t want to let her down, and he feels terrible at the end of this season that he has let her down and he has let her down. But by that point they have bonded, and she obviously forgives him. But it’s just more of an interesting dynamic, I think, to explore.

So, that was really lovely. And in terms of Kate and Felix, working with them, they’re so professional. They just rock up. They know every word. They bring something so magical to it. And they have real chemistry on screen as well.

Ben Edwards: And there’s something about listening to the dialogue. There are times when they…I’m trying to think of a good analogy. You know how you can have a filter on your phone, you take a picture of yourself and then there’s a little filter where you can press it and you go, oh, I look great. And I think they do that with the words. You put these words into this beautiful machine called Kate Phillips, and then out comes this beautiful sentence with twice the meaning that it had on the page. And I think that’s what they do so much, you don’t quite know what it is, but you hear it, and you go, wow, yeah, I believe you.

Rachael New: I’m not sure Kate would like to be called a machine though.

Jace Lacob: Rachael and Ben, thank you so very much.

Rachael New: You’re welcome. Thank you Jace.

Ben Edwards: Thanks, Jace.

And with that, we say goodbye to another arresting season of Miss Scarlet and The Duke. But fret not, as we still have one more episode of the pastoral and cozy animal-filled drama, All Creatures Great and Small.  

CLIP

Siegfried: I don’t see why we must repeat this nonsense year on year.

Mrs. Hall: Because it’s Christmas Day tomorrow. And it’s tradition. All of the children look forward to it.

Siegfried: Well, why does it always fall to me to have to—

Helen: It doesn’t! It was my dad last year.

Join us next week as we talk with series lead Nicholas Ralph and wrap up another joyous season of All Creatures Great and Small.