While some TV shows interrogate modern-day life or imagine humanity’s future, some of the most popular series retread familiar territory. All hail the period drama, one of the most enduring genres of entertainment, as old as the motion-picture medium itself.
“[Period dramas] transport us away from hard times in our own lives,” Dr. Kate Byrne, an English lecturer at Ulster University, told Cosmopolitan UK in 2022, reflecting on the success of Downton Abbey and Bridgerton. “When the world is difficult, viewers like to escape into glossy luxurious pasts, learning about history while forgetting for a while about the darkness of the present.”
Not all period dramas are glossy and luxurious, though, and some find plenty of darkness in our past. Here are our picks for the best period dramas of TV history, which collectively cover millennia of real-world history.
Peaky Blinders
Irish street gangs, British fascists, New York mafiosos, and petty criminals clash in a powder keg of 1920s-era drama and violence in this series, starring Cillian Murphy as the ruthless gang leader Tommy Shelby. Turn on your subtitles if the Brummie accents get the better of you!
Call the Midwife
For more than a decade now, viewers have tuned into PBS to watch the nuns and nurse midwives of Nonnatus House deliver healthcare (often by bicycle). Whereas other period dramas are set in moneyed social strata, Call the Midwife depicts the hardscrabble existence of London’s East end in the 1950s and 1960s.
Bridgerton
This Shondaland bodice-ripper, an adaptation of the romance novels by Julia Quinn, set Netflix viewership records when it debuted in 2020. The show tracks the love lives and sexual entanglements of eight Bridgerton siblings in a racially diverse version of Regency-era high society.
Pachinko
With characters from four generations and dialogue from three languages, this series — adapted from Min Jin Lee’s novel of the same name — tells a finely tuned story of a Korean immigrant family staking out their place in a rapidly changing world. (Bonus points for the joyful dance montage in the opening credits.)
The Underground Railroad
Based on the Pulitzer-winning novel by Colson Whitehead and developed by Oscar winner Barry Jenkins, this magical-realist miniseries follows Cora (Thuso Mbedu) on her journey toward freedom, with the beauty of the show’s magical-realist imagery cut by the brutality and cruelty of the subject matter.
The Crown
Though this drama may play a little fast and loose with history, it still tells a royally fascinating story of Queen Elizabeth II and her heirs. With Claire Foy, Olivia Colman, and Imelda Staunton giving crowning performances as the stiff-lipped British monarch in different eras of her life.
Band of Brothers
Created by Saving Private Ryan collaborators Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg — and based on the Stephen E. Ambrose book of the same name — this World War II saga tracks American parachute infantrymen from their training to their capture of the Nazi’s Eagle’s Nest in Berchtesgaden, Germany. With the budget and production values to match such an epic story.
Downton Abbey
A Masterpiece production that truly lives up to the name, Downton Abbey is the rare PBS production to break into the mainstream. An upstairs-downstairs historical drama centering on Yorkshire upper-crusters and their working-class employees — who become family members in their own right. As they navigate the turbulence of the early 20th century.
Mad Men
“What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons.” So says Don Draper (Jon Hamm) in the pilot episode of this drama. In which Madison Ave. advertising execs paint pictures of domestic bliss in 1960s America. Even as their own relationships and marriages vanish in puffs of cigarette smoke.
Roots
A hundred million Americans tuned in for the conclusion of this television sensation. A miniseries based on the novel of the same name by Alex Haley. The story starts with the abduction of Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton) in Gambia and follows him and his descendants across decades of slavery and oppression in the United States.
What’s your favourite period drama? Tell us in the comments! Keep following us for extra information on the world of TV series and movies!
Chiara
Source: TV Insider
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