She found a fictional world of crime, a real world of horses

For a young actress in her first big role, this was a new world.
Emma Naomi (shown here with Ben Miller) was in Belgium to co-star in “Professor T,” the mystery series that airs at 8 p.m. Sundays on PBS. What struck her about the place?
“The horses,” she said. “There are horses everywhere.”
She’s a city kid who grew up in London, the daughter of two nurses. For “T,” she was often living in Antwerp, which seemed familiar enough; “it’s a fashion capital, lots of coffee shops.” Still, many of the locations took her into the horse-filled countryside.
Naomi plays Detective Sergeant Lisa Donckers, whose life is overcrowded. “She always has quite a bit to deal with,” she said.
Especially now, when she’s surrounded by secrets.
Lisa and her colleague, Detective Sergeant Dan Winters, have a secret romance … She’s up for promotion, but has been told to keep it a secret, even from him … And she frets after learning his secret: He’s moonlighting for suspicious types.
All of that peaks Oct. 1 and 8, with the second-season finale. (A third season has been ordered.) In a crime-of-the-week series, this has been an exception – a story arc building from week to week.
For Naomi, it’s a chance to play an intriguing character. “Lisa is someone who follows her gut a lot,” she said. She reads people well; she even smiles … something that’s rare in any of the Sunday dramas.
But she also needs bursts of cold-eyed logic. That’s where Professor Jasper Tempest comes in.
He’s a criminology professor with a troubled childhood, a fragile soul, no people skills and a potent mind. He’s played by Miller – the second time Donckers has worked with him.
She graduated from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, got some small roles, had some day jobs (including as a zumba dance instructor), then got her first big role.
In the lush “Bridgerton” series, she plays Alice Mondrich, whose husband Will is a nightclub owner and an ex-boxer. Miller played Lord Featherington, who was killed after bribing Will to throw a fight.
“She’s relatively new on the scene,” Miller said of Naomi, “but she has amazing self-assurance.” And one day on the “Bridgerton” set, “She said, ‘Oh Ben, I’ve got an audition for your show.’”
He’d already been cast as Professor T; now she was landing the No. 2 role, as Lisa. Based on a Belgian series, the British version is set in Cambridge. Some scenes are filmed in Cambridge, but many have been shot in Belgium, near all those coffee shops and horses.