10 Of The Best Period Dramas To Stream Now On BBC iPlayer
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36 minutes ago
Call it a guilty pleasure or a purely speculative academic interest, but period dramas have bewitched us, body and soul…
There is a certain delight in leaving the modern world behind for an evening. Trading texts for ink blotched letters, overhead lighting for a dim glow of a single candle and a swift commute back home for a wander through vast dusky hills. While true time travel may still be reserved for Dr Who, slipping into another century has never been easier than today. Whether you’re after Austen’s intricate world of courtships or the gritty, drug-fuelled power plays of 1920s London, the BBC, as it turns out, is a treasure trove full of tellings and retellings of the past – certainly enough to satisfy all our time travel desires. From Regency era romance to chilling mid-century murder mysteries, here is our list of the best period dramas to stream on BBC iPlayer now.
The Best Period Dramas On BBC iPlayer
Pride and Prejudice (1995)
It would be a fool’s errand to discuss great period dramas without mentioning Andrew Davies’s iconic 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Across six episodes, Jennifer Ehle’s Lizzie Bennet navigates marriage and social expectation while repeatedly clashing with Colin Firth’s brooding and increasingly irresistible Darcy. Filmed extensively on location in historic estates across England, the series remains a sumptuous vision of Regency England. Yet perhaps its most enduring legacy is the Darcy it lodged firmly in the cultural imagination. Firth emerging from Pemberley in a soaked shirt is a scene that launched a thousand ‘Darcymania’ ships, coining the visual motif to which virtually every self-respecting period romance has paid homage since. Three decades on, this is still the Austen adaptation against which all others are measured.
Pride and Prejudice, 1995 (c) BBC
And Then There Were None (2015)
Adapted from Agatha Christie’s magnum opus, Sarah Phelps’ star-studded And Then There Were None adaptation turns the classic trope of a country-house whodunnit into a masterclass in claustrophobic suspense. With Europe on the brink of war, the series manages to make the tensions on Soldier Island feel more pressing still as 10 strangers, lured to an isolated island, are to be murdered one by one. Against Cornwall’s windswept coastline, murders, plot twists and an illicit affair run awry in a brooding psychological thriller that makes one of the best-selling books of all time unexpectedly dangerous again.
War and Peace (2016)
Tolstoy’s thousand-page epic War and Peace may be one of literature’s more intimidating undertakings, but Andrew Davies’s six-part adaptation is considerably easier to surrender to. Spanning aristocratic ballrooms, drawing rooms and battlefields of Imperial Russia during the Napoleonic Wars, the series follows the entangled lives of Pierre (Paul Dano), Andrei (James Norton) and Natasha (Lily James). Come for the palace balls, military spectacle and lavish costuming; stay for the romantic entanglements and very messy lives of Russia’s aristocratic elite.
Wolf Hall: The Mirror And The Light (L to R) Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell and Kate Phillips as Jane Seymour (c) BBC/Playground Entertainment/Nick Briggs
Wolf Hall (2015 & 2024)
As it turns out, behind Henry VIII’s marriages, divorces and increasingly bloody court politics stood a rather more intriguing man — Thomas Cromwell. Based on Hilary Mantel’s two Booker Prize-winning novels, Wolf Hall charts his rise from a blacksmith’s son to one of the most powerful men in English court. Accompanied by Mark Rylance’s critically lauded performance of the calculating and almost unnervingly self-possessed protagonist, political intrigue and courtly dealings have never been so nail-biting. (Make sure not to miss its sequel, Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, also on BBC iPlayer.)
Bleak House (2005)
No one’s London is perhaps more iconic than Charles Dickens’. In the BBC’s 2005 Bleak House, its fog and crumbling Victorian grandeur form the backdrop to Esther Summerson’s (Anna Maxwell Martin) entanglement with the wealthy Jarndyce family and a ruinous inheritance case. Dense in subject but brisk in pace, with Gillian Anderson and Charles Dance among its formidable cast, the adaptation turns legal bureaucracy, dark family secrets and social inequality into truly edge-of-your-seat TV.
Peaky Blinders (L to R) Packy Lee as Johnny Dogs, Natasha O’Keeffe as Lizzie Shelby, Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby and Paul Anderson as Arthur Shelby (C) Caryn Mandabach Productions Ltd. – Photographer: Robert Viglasky
Peaky Blinders (2013-2022)
Perhaps the most culturally notorious and commercially successful period crime drama of the 21st century, Peaky Blinders is a gritty tale of power and ambition following the Shelby family criminal empire, set against the backdrop of post-war Birmingham. Released in 2013, the series took the world by storm having won a whopping 22 accolades over its six season run, inspiring a 2026 feature length film along with an upcoming Peaky Blinders sequel series. With an all-star cast that includes Cillian Murphy, Helen McCrory and Tom Hardy, Peaky Blinders is truly a one-of-a-kind collision of historical drama and modern cool.
Jane Eyre (2006)
Few novels have done more for the gothic imagination than Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The 2006 adaptation leans into all the familiar pleasures of Brontë’s world, from a remote country house, its brooding master and coincidentally love interest and a dark past hidden behind closed doors. Ruth Wilson brings a sharp intelligence to Jane, while Toby Stephens gives Rochester enough danger to keep their romance from becoming too comfortable. Dark and emotionally charged, this is a Jane Eyre that understands the gothic works best.
Dope Girls (L to R) Eliza Scanlen as Violet Davies, Julianne Nicholson as Kate Galloway, Eilidh Fisher as Evie Galloway, Umi Myers as Billie Cassidy (c) BBC/Bad Wolf/Ray Burmiston
Dope Girls (2025)
Fittingly hailed as the ‘spiritual successor’ to Peaky Blinders, Dope Girls takes the usual tropes of female led period dramas somewhere considerably seedier. With Little Women’s Eliza Scanlen among its female-led cast, the six-part series is a gripping and unapologetically stylised foray into a post-war London of nightclubs, narcotics and female (criminal) ambition. Set in 1918 Soho, it revels in the neon-lit hedonism and spirited debauchery of the era, while following the women at the helm of the city’s burgeoning underground scene.
Small Island (2009)
As the hopeful Hortense (Naomie Harris) and Gilbert (David Oyelowo) arrive in London from Jamaica, the hallowed ‘Mother Country’ proves colder than anticipated. Their stories become entwined with their landlady Queenie (Ruth Wilson) and her husband Bernard (Benedict Cumberbatch), as the two-part drama moves between Jamaica and Britain, before and after the Second World War. Adapted from Andrea Levy’s acclaimed novel, Small Island is a powerful yet intimate exploration of race, love and the legacy of empire through four lives forced into unexpectedly close quarters.
The Other Bennet Sister (L to R) Dónal Finn as Tom Hayward and Ella Bruccoleri as Mary Bennet (c) BBC/Bad Wolf/James Pardon
The Other Bennet Sister (2026)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that, when it comes to the Bennet sisters, they are rarely short of drama, and we can’t thank them enough for it. With Richard E. Grant and Indira Varma among the cast, The Other Bennet Sister, based on Janice Hadlow’s 2020 novel, shifts the focus onto the painfully shy and oft-forgotten Mary Bennet (Ella Bruccoleri). Across 10 half-hour chapters, Mary ventures out into the coveted social world of London where, to Mrs Bennet’s (Ruth Jones) unscrupulous joy, suitors abound. This series gives us something every middle child deserves – a story entirely her own. (Stay tuned for the three-part Christmas special, which drops on BBC iPlayer this winter.)
