Caroline Framke Chief TV Critic“The Long Song” knows what an audience might expect from a period drama airing on the BBC, as it did in the UK in 2018, or under the PBS Masterpiece banner, as it will in the US starting on January 31. The camera, helmed with a steady hand by director Mahalia Belo, pans across still life scenes of porcelain curios and rumpled silks in a manse surrounded by gently swaying palm trees.