Period TV Shows, a list by Mark Gauci

8.9

/1544/

60

/13/

50

/5/

67

Homefront is an American television drama series created and produced by Lynn Marie Latham and Bernard Lechowick in association with Warner Bros. Television for ABC. The show was set in the fictional city of River Run, Ohio in 1945, 1946, and 1947. The show's theme song, "Accentuate the Positive", was written by Johnny Mercer and performed by Jack Sheldon. Forty-two episodes were broadcast in the United States over two seasons from 1991 to 1993. TV Guide, Abigail Van Buren, and fans showed determination in getting ABC to continue the show for a third season before it was cancelled.

87

8.8

/124253/

85

/3599/

85

/873/

4.6

/117351/

100

/6/

80

MAL

8.7

/1025679/

age 16+

For a thousand years, the Vikings have made quite a name and reputation for themselves as the strongest families with a thirst for violence. Thorfinn, the son of one of the Vikings' greatest warriors, spends his boyhood in a battlefield enhancing his skills in his adventure to redeem his most-desired revenge after his father was murdered.

81

8.7

/157950/

83

/4970/

83

/838/

4.2

/17149/

89

/27/

78

69

/12/

age 15+

Follow the Dutton family as they embark on a journey west through the Great Plains toward the last bastion of untamed America. A stark retelling of Western expansion, and an intense study of one family fleeing poverty to seek a better future in America’s promised land — Montana.

86

IMDb 54

8.7

/749290/

85

/22015/

85

/10720/

93

/113/

94

77

/16/

age 18+

A gangster family epic set in 1919 Birmingham, England and centered on a gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps, and their fierce boss Tommy Shelby, who means to move up in the world.

86

8.6

/215947/

83

/9522/

80

/1196/

92

/227/

95

83

/85/

age 18+

Atlantic City at the dawn of Prohibition is a place where the rules don't apply. And the man who runs things -- legally and otherwise -- is the town's treasurer, Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, who is equal parts politician and gangster.

81

8.6

/78426/

86

/3890/

87

/4855/

63

/37/

91

79

/17/

age 12+

A coming-of-age story about an outsider who, against all odds and numerous challenges, fights for love and acceptance and for her place in the world. The series centers on a young orphaned girl in the late 1890s, who, after an abusive childhood spent in orphanages and the homes of strangers, is mistakenly sent to live with an elderly woman and her aging brother. Over time, 13-year-old Anne will transform their lives and eventually the small town in which they live with her unique spirit, fierce intellect and brilliant imagination.

83

8.6

/277638/

82

/9410/

82

/2274/

81

/553/

92

78

/181/

age 15+

The gripping, decades-spanning inside story of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Prime Ministers who shaped Britain's post-war destiny. The Crown tells the inside story of two of the most famous addresses in the world – Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street – and the intrigues, love lives and machinations behind the great events that shaped the second half of the 20th century. Two houses, two courts, one Crown.

80

8.6

/34825/

80

/1243/

75

/245/

81

/18/

age 14+

Drama following the lives of a group of midwives working in the poverty-stricken East End of London during the 1950s, based on the best-selling memoirs of Jennifer Worth.

81

79

8.5

/14338/

82

/361/

80

/124/

4.1

/2510/

80

/20/

The story of the United States' space program, from its beginnings in 1961 to the final moon mission in 1972.

86

8.5

/62437/

84

/3325/

83

/733/

4.5

/44741/

89

/9/

93

MAL

8.5

/676115/

Break-dancing but fierce warrior Mugen has to deal with the cold-blooded and conceited Jin, a samurai who believes he is above all. These sworn enemies are brought together by Fuu for a special task.

83

59

8.5

/5221/

83

/73/

82

/37/

age 7+

In the fictional small town of Avonlea, Prince Edward Island, in the early 20th century, 10-year-old Montreal heiress Sara Stanley is sent by her wealthy father to live with her two maiden aunts, Hetty and Olivia King, to be near her late mother's side of the family.

82

8.5

/37676/

81

/658/

81

/192/

4.1

/10342/

Margaret Hale is a southerner from a country vicarage newly settled in the industrial northern town of Milton. In the shock of her move, she misjudges charismatic cotton mill-owner John Thornton, whose strength of purpose and passion are a match for her own pride and willfulness. When the workers of Milton call a strike, Margaret takes their side, and the two are brought into deeper conflict. As events spiral out of control, Margaret - to her surprise - begins to fall in love with Thornton...

83

8.4

/37747/

83

/4716/

79

/534/

90

/121/

91

75

/59/

age 14+

During the rise of the PC era in the early 1980s, an unlikely trio - a visionary, an engineer and a prodigy - take personal and professional risks in the race to build a computer that will change the world as they know it.

86

8.4

/32878/

80

/1236/

77

/378/

100

/40/

89

age 17+

Beneath the decadence of 1929 Berlin, lies an underworld city of sin. Police investigator Gereon Rath has been transferred from Cologne to the epicenter of political and social changes in the Golden Twenties.

76

56

8.4

/3926/

71

/74/

77

/29/

71

/26/

Upstairs: the wealthy, aristocratic Bellamys. Downstairs: their loyal and lively servants. For nearly 30 years, they share a fashionable townhouse at 165 Eaton Place in London’s posh Belgravia neighborhood, surviving social change, political upheaval, scandals, and the horrors of the First World War.

80

8.4

/39496/

79

/1005/

76

/323/

4.0

/11503/

82

/39/

86

78

/27/

Adapted from David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, this lavish seven-part miniseries chronicles the life of Founding Father John Adams, starting with the Boston Massacre of 1770 through his years as an ambassador in Europe, then his terms as vice president and president of the United States, up to his death on July 4, 1826.

76

75

8.4

/19954/

80

/392/

74

/237/

4.1

/4804/

77

/35/

67

The epic tale of celebrated Pulitzer-prize winning author Alex Haley's ancestors as portrayed in the acclaimed twelve hour mini-series Roots, was first told in his 1976 bestseller Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The docu-drama covers a period of history that begins in mid-1700s Gambia, West Africa and concludes during post-Civil War United States, over 100 years later. This 1977 miniseries eventually won 9 Emmy awards, a Golden Globe award, and a Peabody award, and still stands as the most watched miniseries in U.S. history.

63

?

8.2

/601/

43

/11/

68

/9/

Edward the Seventh is a 1975 television drama series, made by ATV in 13 episodes. Based on the biography of Edward VII by Philip Magnus, it starred Timothy West as the elder Edward VII and Simon Gipps-Kent and Charles Sturridge as Edward in his youth, Annette Crosbie as Queen Victoria, Deborah Grant and Helen Ryan as Queen Alexandra, Robert Hardy as the Prince Consort, Alison Leggatt as the Duchess of Kent, and Felicity Kendal as Princess Vicky. It was directed by John Gorrie, who wrote episodes 7-10 with David Butler writing the remainder of the series. The series also featured John Gielgud as Benjamin Disraeli, Michael Hordern as William Ewart Gladstone, Harry Andrews as young Edward's tutor Colonel Bruce, Jane Lapotaire as Empress Marie of Russia, Christopher Neame as Kaiser Wilhelm II and, in one of his earliest roles, Charles Dance as Edward's eldest son Eddy, who died at the age of 28. Gielgud previously played Disraeli in the 1941 film The Prime Minister. The actresses playing Edward's mistresses include Moira Redmond as Alice Keppel and Carolyn Seymour as Daisy Greville. Francesca Annis was featured in two episodes as Lillie Langtry which led to Butler writing a full series about Mrs Langtry's life for Annis to star in, Lillie.

74

52

8.3

/1299/

54

/25/

68

/16/

80

/10/

92

72

/20/

Poldark is a television drama based on Winston Graham's novels of the same title. It was first transmitted on BBC Two across two seasons between 1975 and 1977. The adaptation covered all seven novels (of the eventual twelve) published up to the time. In late 18th-century Cornwall, Ross Poldark loses his fiancée, well-bred beauty Elizabeth, to his cousin Francis. He ends up marrying his servant, Demelza Carne, but his passion for Elizabeth simmers on for years. Meanwhile, he strives to make his derelict copper mines a success. Life is hard, smuggling is rife, and Ross finds himself taking the side of the underclass against the ruthless behaviour of his enemies, the greedy Warleggan clan.

76

20

8.3

/1321/

71

/46/

74

/8/

age 15+

The true tale of pioneering 18th century barrister William Garrow, who acted as counsel for the accused, introducing the concept of 'innocent until proved guilty' at London's Old Bailey.

?

8.0

/55/

10

/2/

50

/1/

This 10-episode television miniseries, set in England during World War II, tells the story of two families, the wealthy Hamiltons and the working-class Slaters, now united through marriage.

83

75

8.3

/11392/

75

/201/

81

/58/

3.9

/1874/

93

/14/

The generous John Jarndyce, struggling with his own past, and his two young wards Richard and Ada, are all caught up, like Lady Dedlock, in the infamous case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, which will make one of them rich beyond imagination if it can ever be brought to a conclusion. As Tulkinghorn digs deeper into Lady Dedlock's past, he unearths a secret that will change their lives forever, and which is almost as astounding as the final outcome of the Jarndyce case.

80

8.3

/39941/

80

/1325/

77

/308/

89

/77/

79

72

/20/

age 14+

Britain is in the grip of a chilling recession... falling wages, rising prices, civil unrest - only the bankers are smiling. It's 1783 and Ross Poldark returns from the American War of Independence to his beloved Cornwall to find his world in ruins: his father dead, the family mine long since closed, his house wrecked and his sweetheart pledged to marry his cousin. But Ross finds that hope and love can be found when you are least expecting it in the wild but beautiful Cornish landscape.

78

66

8.3

/7049/

77

/198/

74

/43/

A mysterious woman is perched between the harsh legacy of World War II and the hope of a new life in Australia. A sweeping romantic drama set in 1950s rural Australia following the lives of the Blighs, a wealthy and complicated pastoralist family, who lives in Inverness, NSW.

80

68

8.3

/11511/

76

/180/

82

/50/

3.8

/1086/

A rich and comic drama about the people of Cranford, a small Cheshire town on the cusp of change in the 1840s. Adapted from the novels by Elizabeth Gaskell.

82

8.3

/196741/

81

/8918/

82

/2752/

90

/132/

85

76

/68/

age 17+

The story of Claire Randall, a married combat nurse from 1945 who is mysteriously swept back in time to 1743, where she is immediately thrown into an unknown world where her life is threatened. When she is forced to marry Jamie, a chivalrous and romantic young Scottish warrior, a passionate affair is ignited that tears Claire's heart between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.

78

75

8.3

/23647/

78

/330/

77

/135/

3.8

/8763/

75

/8/

age 11+

Charlotte Bronte's classic about an orphan girl who grows up to become a governess in a gloomy manor in Yorkshire, where she falls in love with the mysterious Edward Rochester.

78

8.2

/24432/

80

/1496/

72

/184/

81

/93/

89

69

/31/

age 15+

In 1977 New York City, the talented and soulful youth of the South Bronx chase dreams and breakneck beats to transform music history.

84

80

8.2

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77

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74

/76/

98

/42/

82

89

/11/

A series of British television films featuring William Shakespeare's History Plays.

83

8.2

/18066/

76

/606/

74

/139/

4.1

/4620/

99

/81/

82

87

/38/

age 14+

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the King dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The Pope and most of Europe oppose him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer, and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?

73

24

8.3

/1671/

57

/19/

80

/12/

Set in London between 1900 and 1925, the story follows Louisa Leyton/Trotter, the eponymous "Duchess", who works her way up from servant to renowned cook to proprietress of the upper-class Bentinck Hotel in Duke Street, St. James's.

72

?

8.2

/555/

57

/11/

79

/5/

Featuring true cases, characters and events taken from the London Hospital records, nurse's ward diaries and intimate memoirs, these gritty medical series show the lives – and forbidden romances – of pioneering doctors and nurses a hundred years ago.

83

8.2

/17371/

80

/808/

77

/201/

4.1

/6922/

92

/73/

93

78

/24/

age 15+

Halifax, West Yorkshire, England, 1832. Anne Lister attempts to revitalize her inherited home, Shibden Hall. Most notably for the time period, a part of her plan is to help the fate of her own family - by taking a wife.

84

71

8.2

/4828/

74

/81/

82

/26/

100

/7/

88

79

/6/

The story of a group of inspirational women in a rural Cheshire community with the shadow of World War II casting a dark cloud over their lives. As the conflict takes hold and separates the women from their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers, the characters find themselves under increasing and extraordinary pressures in a rapidly fragmenting world. By banding together as the Great Paxford Women’s Institute, they help maintain the nation’s fabric in its darkest hour, and discover inner resources that will change their lives forever.

78

8.2

/34001/

79

/1326/

73

/277/

87

/72/

84

67

/27/

age 13+

The story of Queen Victoria, who came to the throne at a time of great economic turbulence and resurgent republicanism – and died 64 years later the head of the largest empire the world had ever seen, having revitalised the throne’s public image and become “grandmother of Europe”.

83

8.2

/16347/

78

/553/

73

/117/

94

/39/

94

77

/9/

In 1935, financially strapped widow Louisa Durrell, whose life has fallen apart, decides to move from England, with her four children (three sons, one daughter), to the island of Corfu, Greece. Once there, the family moves into a dilapidated old house that has no electricity and that is crumbling apart. But life on Corfu is cheap, it's an earthly paradise, and the Durrells proceed to forge their new existence, with all its challenges, adventures, and forming relationships.

86

80

8.2

/11442/

75

/196/

78

/75/

3.8

/1923/

100

/10/

100

81

/9/

Amy Dorrit spends her days earning money for the family and looking after her proud father who is a long term inmate of Marshalsea debtors' prison in London. Amy and her family's world is transformed when her employer's son, Arthur Clennam, returns from overseas to solve his family's mysterious legacy and discovers that their lives are interlinked.

80

61

8.2

/9230/

76

/129/

84

/33/

Set in the small hamlet of Lark Rise and the wealthier neighbouring market town, Candleford, the series chronicles the daily lives of farm-workers, craftsmen and gentry at the end of the 19th Century. Lark Rise to Candleford is a love letter to a vanished corner of rural England and a heart-warming drama series teeming with wit, wisdom and romance.

76

72

8.1

/6629/

76

/236/

69

/55/

71

/41/

95

65

/22/

age 16+

A look at the personal and professional lives of employees at an American news magazine in the late 1960s.

78

71

8.1

/3915/

79

/293/

75

/70/

3.5

/2750/

The story takes place at the beginning of the 19th century. Goo Hae-Ryung is a historian who tries to fight gender stereotypes as her work is often looked down on. She meets Prince Yi Rim.

82

8.1

/62898/

78

/2664/

80

/1098/

96

/142/

84

78

/50/

age 15+

A genre-bending, anti-historical ride through 18th century Russia following the rise of Catherine the Nothing to Catherine the Great and her explosive relationship with husband Peter, the emperor of Russia.

74

?

8.1

/3427/

74

/91/

74

/31/

Brother Cadfael is a twelfth-century Anglo-Welsh monk. A retired crusader disappointed in love, and now a herbalist in charge of the gardens of Shrewsbury Abbey, Brother Cadfael is often called on to solve murders and other crimes in and around Shrewsbury, Shropshire, in the border country where England meets Wales.

79

8.1

/17399/

80

/1376/

73

/155/

88

/50/

93

64

/30/

age 12+

Once upon a time, the dashing hero, Prince Galavant lost the love of his life, Madalena, to the evil King Richard. Now, our fallen hero is ready to take revenge and restore his “happily ever after.” But it won't be without a few twists and turns along the way in this fairytale musical.

80

34

8.1

/1713/

77

/71/

82

/19/

The story of George, who being frustrated by memories of fighting in the great war and living with his extended family, wants to bring more beauty into the world. When he comes across a camel and monkey that are about to be abandoned, he embarks on a plan to set up a zoo.

51

?

8.0

/231/

10

/4/

63

/7/

Tender Is the Night is a 1985 television drama miniseries co-produced by Showtime, 20th Century Fox Television, BBC, and 7 Network. Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1934 novel of the same name, the six-part series focuses on themes of love, ambition, mental illness, and the decline of the American Dream. 1920s, the French Riviera: wealthy expatriate Nicole Warren's mental illness strains her marriage to psychiatrist Dick. A young American actress named Rosemary Hoyt arrives and is drawn into their circle, becoming romantically involved with the older, married Dick and disrupting the fragile balance of the group. The thought of Dick possibly being attracted to another sends Nicole on an emotional downward spiral that threatens to consume them all.

81

8.1

/24030/

77

/1296/

74

/185/

94

/39/

90

72

/18/

age 16+

A drama set in the East End of London in 1889, during the aftermath of the "Ripper" murders. The action centres around the notorious H Division – the police precinct from hell – which is charged with keeping order in the chaotic streets of Whitechapel. Ripper Street explores the lives of characters trying to recover from the Ripper's legacy, from crimes that have not only irretrievably altered their lives, but the very fabric of their city. At the drama's heart our detectives try to bring a little light into the dark world they inhabit.

77

8.1

/25166/

77

/1287/

71

/230/

81

/59/

92

62

/35/

age 14+

The story of New York farmer, Abe Woodhull, who bands together with a group of childhood friends to form The Culper Ring, an unlikely group of spies who turn the tide in America’s fight for independence.

71

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8.1

/828/

60

/9/