‘Jamestown’ comes to Arizona PBS on Sept. 30

Imagine beginning a new life in a whole new world.

From the makers of “Downton Abbey” comes “Jamestown” on Sundays at 6 p.m. beginning Sept. 30, which follows the lives of three women as they wrestle with the challenges of creating a new life in a beautiful, forbidding land. In the 17th century, on the edge of the breathtaking but untamed Virginian wilderness, sits the English colony of Jamestown.

WATCH: Miss the broadcast? Enjoy “Jamestown” on your own schedule via Arizona PBS Passport. Season 2 comes to Passport Nov. 21.

The settlement barely survived its first decade but is on the brink of change summoned by the arrival of a new governor, Yeardley, and 90 so-called “maids to make brides” – a bid from the presiding Virginia Company to establish the town as a prosperous place for all. Yeardley also brings with him a charter, granting land to the earliest settlers in reward for their loyalty, but new laws cause power struggles within the town and with the native inhabitants.

By 1619, a dozen years after the men founded the colony of Jamestown, women arrive from England duty bound to marry the men that have paid for their passage. Among the women are Alice, Verity, and Jocelyn who arrive with little idea of what the future holds or the disruption they are about to bring to the settlement. The new governor, Sir George Yeardley, and his wife also arrive and discover that running the settlement is not without problems with a company secretary trying to undermine his position.