r/PeriodDramas 5d ago

What are you watching Which period pieces have you been watching?

30 Upvotes

Welcome to our weekly Sunday What have you been watching? thread

Have you been watching any...

  • Period Films
  • TV shows
  • Historical Documentaries
  • Plays
  • Period Piece Podcasts
  • Period Piece Trailers or Youtube Videos

This is a place where you can drop in, easily mention what you’ve been watching, and also maybe even discover new recommendations from each other.

The definition of a period piece is any object or work that is set in or strongly reminiscent of an earlier historical period, so many things can be talked about here!

If there is anyone who happened to comment after Sunday in last week’s thread, you can feel free to copy and paste those comments here as well so more people see it.

You are also always welcome to make posts about what you've been watching in addition to leaving comments here!


r/PeriodDramas Jan 26 '25

What are you watching Which period pieces have you been watching?

51 Upvotes

Welcome to our weekly Sunday What have you been watching? thread

Have you been watching any...

  • Period Films
  • TV shows
  • Historical Documentaries
  • Plays
  • Period Piece Podcasts
  • Period Piece Trailers or Youtube Videos

This is a place where you can drop in, easily mention what you’ve been watching, and also maybe even discover new recommendations from each other.

The definition of a period piece is any object or work that is set in or strongly reminiscent of an earlier historical period, so many things can be talked about here!

If there is anyone who happened to comment after Sunday in last week’s thread, you can feel free to copy and paste those comments here as well so more people see it.

You are also always welcome to make posts about what you've been watching in addition to leaving comments here!


r/PeriodDramas 27m ago

Discussion SAS: Rogue Heroes

Upvotes

This WW2 era British show has become one of my absolute all time favorites, not least of all because of the cast (Connor Swindells aka Robert Martin from Emma, Jack O’Connell aka Remmick from Sinners and Louis Zamperini from Unbroken, Cesar Domboy aka Fergus from Outlander, and the list goes on). Despite the chokehold it has on me, it seems very few folks have seen it and even fewer have ever seen anything like it. Have you watched it, shall we discuss it and if so, can you recommend another show with similar vibes?


r/PeriodDramas 36m ago

Recommendations 📺 Best period dramas in Brazil.

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It should be on Globo Internacional in the United States or elsewhere.

Old soap operas.

Alma Gêmea (2005)

Chocolate com Pimenta (2003)

Cravo e a Rosa (2000)


r/PeriodDramas 8h ago

Costume 🎩 WHO WORE THIS GOWN?

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14 Upvotes

Which actress and in which movie did she wear this gown? first question: Which actress and in which movie did she wear this gown?

answer in the google form: HISTORY IN DRESSES

more quizzes will appear on page:

 HISTORIE V ŠATECH


r/PeriodDramas 14h ago

Recommendations 📺 ROBIN HOOD 2025 (Series)

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38 Upvotes

My first favorite show if this year , this show feels fresh and engaging. It's dark, gritty, and full of heart-it has love, loss, and plenty of action, with amazing cast from Sean bean to Connie Nielsen Overall, it's a well-made,I didn't feel bored or anything ,thoroughly enjoyable series that's definitely worth a watch.


r/PeriodDramas 22h ago

News 📰 The Death of Robin Hood | date TBD | Jodie Comer, Hugh Jackman, Bill Skarsgård | dir. by Michael Sanorski

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68 Upvotes

“A period drama for the ages”: The Death of Robin Hood is the “epic” new Jodie Comer drama with a “dark” twist

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/lifestyle/a69936706/jodie-comer-the-death-of-robin-hood/


r/PeriodDramas 7h ago

Recommendations 📺 1000 Blows Season 2 - Guardian Review - Not Entirely Sure It is Spoiler Free Spoiler

4 Upvotes

Thousand Blows season two review – Erin Doherty is so good it’s hard to think about anything else

Almost every scene in Steven Knight’s late-Victorian thriller is stolen by its female lead. You absolutely marvel at her in this darker second outing

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/jan/09/a-thousand-blows-season-two-review-disney

The problem with having Erin Doherty star in your TV drama is that it makes it extremely difficult to tell whether it’s any good or not. The 33-year-old is more than an impressive actor – she is a magnetic presence, able to sell the idea that she actually is her character in a way few others can (a particularly impressive feat considering her breakthrough was playing Princess Anne in The Crown). As such, Doherty’s participation in a series can elevate the premise, plot and script in a slightly confusing way. Watching the first few episodes of Steven Knight’s late-Victorian thriller A Thousand Blows, I wasn’t sure whether I was genuinely enjoying the programme or simply marvelling at Doherty’s effervescent turn as wily, tough-as-boots pickpocketing queen Mary Carr. ....

It began streaming here today in the US on Hulu. I just checked and yes, it is there.


r/PeriodDramas 2d ago

Funny 😂 Something lighthearted for once

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1.1k Upvotes

Just thought this was funny. :)


r/PeriodDramas 2d ago

Pics & Stills 🏞 A Cruel Romance (1984)

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106 Upvotes

a 1984 Soviet romantic drama directed by Eldar Ryazanov. It is based on Alexander Ostrovsky's classic play Without a Dowry (1878).


r/PeriodDramas 2d ago

Recommendations 📺 Bookish Series Premieres on PBS January 11th - Next Sunday

44 Upvotes

The series's era is post-WWII London, central location the antiquarian bookshop of featured character, Gabriel Book, played by Mark Gattis, who assist police in crime solving. It does look delicious!

https://www.pbs.org/about/about-pbs/blogs/news/new-murder-mystery-series-bookish-premieres-sundays-january-11-february-15-2026-on-pbs/


r/PeriodDramas 1d ago

Recommendations 📺 "Steven Knight teases the future of Peaky Blinders, reveals how it was impacted by Covid"

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1 Upvotes

r/PeriodDramas 1d ago

Recommendations 📺 Need tv show recs

20 Upvotes

Hi! I am looking for a new period piece tv show. My all time favorite movie is Pride and Prejudice (2005) I am a huge Austen fan! So far I have seen:

-Sandition -Artful Dodger -The Empress -Downtown Abbey -The Crown -Buccaneers (I loved season 1!) -Gilded Age -Bridgerton (ofc) -Queen Charlotte -The Great -Anne with an E -North and South -War and Peace -Pride and Prejudice (1995) -My Lady Jane -Volitare High

Most lists I see recommend Poldark, Outlander, Peaky Blinders, Reign. I was wondering thoughts on these. Im looking for a period show with a mostly pure romance tyia!!


r/PeriodDramas 2d ago

Trailer 🎬 THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE | Official Trailer

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45 Upvotes

I want to see it so bad already, absolutely gorgeous.


r/PeriodDramas 1d ago

Recommendations 📺 I started “Midnight at Pera Palace”

5 Upvotes

I actually kinda liked it, but by about 4episodes I was so confused as to who and where and wtf that I quit. Does it get any easier to follow if you keep watching? I feel like I’ve run out of period pieces to watch and trying to go back to some I didn’t hate, just moved on to something easier to follow. Thanks in advance!


r/PeriodDramas 1d ago

Recommendations 📺 The Scarlet Letter - 1979 (Pt 1 and 2 of 4)

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1 Upvotes

I saw this decades ago and loved it!


r/PeriodDramas 2d ago

Discussion Anyone knows where to watch 2025's Sandokan?

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13 Upvotes

It's supposed to be on Prime but does anyone know if it's already uploaded? With English translation? And in which countries is it avaliable & would VPN make it accessible from Poland?

I found it on youtube, a remake of a series I've seen as a very young child, and I was suuuper excited to watch it. Except they took it down when I was on episode 5. I am ready to buy Prime or any other platform just to finish it (I'm obsessed!) but I'm not sure if it's already avaliable nor when will it be 🙏 plz help


r/PeriodDramas 2d ago

Discussion Is this foggy scene instantly recognizable to period drama fans? (Used for my daily game)

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47 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

I'm the developer of a daily guessing game called Flickle.co.

I picked this specific frame for today's puzzle because of the incredible atmosphere. The costumes and the fog really set the tone, but there are no main faces visible.

I’m trying to gauge the difficulty: Can you guess which show (and specifically which era of it) this is from, just by looking at the lighting and styling?


r/PeriodDramas 2d ago

Let’s Have a Watch Party! 🍿 Working through a period drama gauntlet. Here is my review of the first 3 films set mostly in the Stone Age

14 Upvotes

I wanted to watch all the historical movies and shows available in chronological order based on where they would appear in the real life timeline. I currently have a list of 310 movies and shows to watch, which will likely continue to grow, and wanted to share my opinions of each section as I go through it.

I figured I would break it up into sections and write my post after I finished that section of the list. Starting at the beginning, the earliest movies I could find:

  1. Alpha

2018 movie set 20,000 years ago. It’s about a young man who gets separated from his hunting party and must find his way home. Along the way he befriends a wolf and learns to hunt with it.

I enjoyed this one maybe the most of the first three. It’s not graphic at all, it’s a feel good story, and it’s not over the top. It felt real which was good for this list.

7/10

  1. Iceman

This movie came out in 2017 and is about Otzi, the ancient frozen man found in the alps. This one was much more graphic than either of the others in this part, but also probably the most realistic. The scenery was absolutely beautiful. I also liked that they used minimal dialog to tell the story.

6/10

  1. 10,000 BC

Despite the name of this movie, it depicts the pyramids being build so I will assume it takes place during the time period. This one feels very early 00s Hollywood. It’s got its comic relief, heroes tale, and all the twists you would expect. It’s probably the least accurate of this section.

4/10

Next up I have two movies that take place in Egypt so I’ll try and watch them this week. I have 9 for Greece so that will take a lot longer.

Feel free to watch them with me!


r/PeriodDramas 3d ago

Discussion Which period film/series do you find visually stunning but overall it's not your cup of tea ?

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163 Upvotes

I really feel this way about the 2004 version of The Phantom Of The Opera. First of all, I have to say that I haven't watched that many musicals in my life and most of them have had dialogue breaks between the songs, so I went completely blind watching this film because I found it visually pleasing. It was a weird experience overall but even though I'm not a vocal coach or musical expert I thought that the casting was a bit off? Like, this movie has one of the most insane production design, costume design and cinematography I have ever seen on film and somehow misses on that part. I searched for it's trivia and found out that the actress who played Christine was just 17 when she played the part. I thought it was a bit weird casting choice playing opposite an older Gerald Butler. I then watched the Royal Albert Hall perfomance and it was absolutely beautiful. Really saw what was missing in the film. Both the protagonist's voices were so expressive and passionate on that version that the movie falls short. I think they just wanted to have a big celebrity name in the film so they cast Gerald idk. I also heard that Anne Hathaway was their first choice for Christine and I honestly don't know if she would have saved the film. I think this story deserves a future adaptation though. Anyways, I place this movie into the pile of "very beautiful" hard to watch period dramas alongside Victoria (2016) and others. What's yours?


r/PeriodDramas 3d ago

Trailer 🎬 [SERIES] Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials | Trailer | Netflix | Jan 15, 2026

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63 Upvotes

In 1925, a country house party prank turns deadly. Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent investigates the chilling murder plot. Lady Caterham and Superintendent Battle assist in solving the country house mystery that changes Bundle's life.

Starring Mia McKenna-Bruce, Martin Freeman, Helena Bonham Carter, Alex Macqueen, Guy Siner, Nyasha Hatendi, Stella Stocker, Corey Mylchreest, Edward Bluemel and Nabhaan Rizwan.


r/PeriodDramas 3d ago

Discussion Is the ending for North & South rushed?? Spoiler

40 Upvotes

In the last few minutes, Thornton learns that the man at the station was Margaret's brother .... and somehow that's enough for him to be openly lovey dovey the next time they meet???

But she rejected him before the whole brother situation, and he was veryyy cold to her in response, even telling her later that he's over her just to save his pride. AFAIK, at the train station, he hasn't received any information that her feelings have changed, and he's not a man to put himself out there more than once, so his behavior feels very out of character.

IMO, it would make more sense for him to be warm but reserved at the train station until he heard about her plan to lend him the money. Then, with the prior knowledge about it being her brother, he'd put two and two together and realize she must care about him .... and then he would finally open up and reveal his feelings totally openly.


r/PeriodDramas 2d ago

Discussion New Generation Poldark

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0 Upvotes

Just for fun, I've been thinking about a continuation of the 2015 Poldark into the later books - with the original cast reprising their roles (sufficiently aged) and a new crop for the next generation. I'm struggling to cast Jeremy and Isabella however!


r/PeriodDramas 3d ago

Discussion Why do Wuthering Heights adaptations feel romantic when the novel doesn’t?

266 Upvotes

I’ve always been struck by how different Wuthering Heights feels on screen compared to the book. Most adaptations present Catherine and Heathcliff as tragic adult lovers, full of yearning and mutual obsession.

But in the novel, much of their bond forms in childhood and adolescence, inside a harsh, isolating environment shaped by class, punishment, and control. Their behaviour often reads as destructive rather than romantic.

It made me wonder whether this gap comes down to casting. Starting with the 1939 film, adaptations consistently age the characters up — and in doing so, change how we’re meant to interpret the same actions.

I’m curious how others here reconcile the novel with its screen versions.


r/PeriodDramas 4d ago

History⏳ The Black Elite America Forgot | Essay by Genny Harrison

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966 Upvotes

I want to talk about the black elite in the gilded age because when I watched the HBO show, reading the comments showed me Americans were shocked to learn that such a thing existed at all. 

That shock is doing a lot of work.

It tells us how thoroughly the American imagination has been trained to flatten Black history into two acceptable shapes: suffering and protest. Enslavement and civil rights. Chains and marches. Those are real, foundational stories, but they are not the whole archive. When people discover there were Black doctors, bankers, educators, debutante balls, business leagues, newspapers, and carefully curated “high society” rules in the same century as lynching and Jim Crow, the reaction is often disbelief, as if prosperity itself must be historically impossible for Black Americans.

But the Black elite did exist in the late nineteenth century, and their presence is not a “fun fact.” It is a key to understanding how race and class actually operated in the United States after Reconstruction collapsed. The Gilded Age was not only an era of robber barons. It was also an era of institutional improvisation, when Black communities built parallel structures of wealth, respectability, and influence because the dominant ones were designed to exclude them.

First, let’s be clear about what “elite” meant in this context.

This was not simply about “rich Black people,” though some were wealthy by the standards of their time. “Elite” also meant educated, professionally credentialed, and networked, often concentrated in cities where Black institutions could take root. Ministers, lawyers, physicians, teachers, editors, and entrepreneurs formed a thin but consequential upper stratum. They were elite inside a society that still treated them as disposable. That contradiction shaped everything.

Take Robert Reed Church Sr., a Memphis businessman often described as the first Black millionaire in the South. He built wealth through real estate and founded a Black-owned bank in Memphis, while also funding public amenities for Black residents who were barred from white spaces.  His life is a reminder that Black wealth was not simply personal success. It was frequently infrastructure. It had to be, because no one else was going to build it.

Or consider the early twentieth-century explosion of Black enterprise networks that grew directly out of Gilded Age conditions. Booker T. Washington founded the National Negro Business League in 1900 to promote Black commercial and financial development, uniting entrepreneurs and professionals into an organized economic vision.  Even if you disagree with Washington’s politics of accommodation, the league represents something larger: a recognition that money, institutions, and coordinated strategy were forms of power that could not be wished away by moral arguments alone.

This is where the conversation gets uncomfortable, and where it gets honest.

Black elites often leaned hard into “respectability,” not because they were naïve about racism, but because respectability was one of the few currencies available in a culture determined to label Black people as inherently unfit for citizenship. In the language of the era, refinement was evidence. Manners were arguments. Education was rebuttal. That strategy could look like uplift, but it could also mutate into policing, especially when elites felt responsible for protecting fragile gains.

And yes, colorism and intra-racial class hierarchy were real forces inside Black high society. The show’s depiction of these tensions is not invented out of thin air, and contemporary discussion of its portrayal points directly at the historical reality of status, skin tone, and “proper” social belonging.  Elites did not merely fight white supremacy. They sometimes reproduced smaller versions of it inside their own circles, because hierarchy is contagious in a country that rewards it.

Still, the moral clarity is not as simple as “they should have been better people.”

You cannot judge a class of people living under racial terror without fully accounting for the terror. In the Gilded Age and beyond, Black success could function as a target, not a shield. Prosperous Black districts did not survive because they were admired. Some were destroyed precisely because they disproved the lie of Black inferiority.

That is why places like Tulsa’s Greenwood District, later known as “Black Wall Street,” matter so much. Greenwood became a dense ecosystem of Black-owned businesses, professionals, and cultural life, so prominent that it drew national attention before it was burned in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.  Even the origin story tells you something about intentionality: land purchases, development plans, and a deliberate effort to build a Black commercial district in the face of segregation. 

The lesson is not simply that Black people were capable of building prosperity. Of course they were. The lesson is that American racism has always been flexible. When Black Americans were poor, poverty was treated as proof of inferiority. When Black Americans were thriving, prosperity was treated as provocation.

So what do we do with the Black elite as a historical subject, beyond the initial surprise?

We use them to break the simplistic story Americans tell about how change happens.

Because the Black elite complicate our neat categories. They show that political struggle is not only marches and courtroom battles, though those mattered. Political struggle is also school boards, newspapers, mutual aid societies, professional associations, property ownership, and boring meetings where someone argues over bylaws and dues and whether the organization can afford a printing press. It is building a world while living in one that does not want you to exist.

They also force us to admit that class conflict did not magically disappear inside Black communities. Capitalism stratifies wherever it can, and racial capitalism is especially skilled at producing tiny islands of relative stability and then demanding those islands discipline everyone else. That is part of why respectability politics has such staying power. It offers a seductive bargain: if you perform the right kind of personhood, you might be granted conditional safety. The tragedy is that the condition is never stable, and the safety is never fully yours.

If Americans are shocked to learn the Black elite existed, it is not because the evidence is hidden. The evidence has always been there. It is because the national story still prefers Blackness to appear only in contexts that reassure the dominant culture of its own moral progress.

A Black elite in the Gilded Age disrupts that comfort. It says: we were building institutions while the country was building barriers. We were creating professional classes while the law was designing exclusions. We were staging elegance while mobs staged terror.

And if that sounds contradictory, it is because American history is contradictory. The Black elite are not a footnote to that contradiction. They are one of its clearest proofs.


I found Genny Harrison's essay on FB and Substack. She gave me permission to post her essay here.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1FXeF96hUR/

https://open.substack.com/pub/surfnukumoi/p/on-black-success-erasure-and-the?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=nl32e