13 Best-Ever TV Period Dramas, Ranked

Dan Clarendon

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.

13
Call the Midwife
Where to Stream Call the Midwife

Call the Midwife

2012–

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.

12
Bridgerton
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Bridgerton

2020–

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.

11
Rome
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Rome

2005–2007

Rome was undone by its high production costs, canceled after two seasons. But the lavish spending meant that viewers feel immersed in Ancient Rome as they meet Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Augustus, and Cleopatra and other historical figures from Rome’s segue from republic to empire.

10
Deadwood
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Deadwood

2004–2006

Few stories show how Wild the West was like Deadwood, which featured fictionalized versions of real-life Deadwood residents — including lawman Seth Bullock, saloon owner Al Swearengen, and sharpshooter Calamity Jane — as they grapple for survival and power on the 1870s frontier.

9
Peaky Blinders
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Peaky Blinders

2013–2022

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!

8
The Americans
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The Americans

2013–2018

All’s fair in love and Cold War, according to the tagline of this spy thriller starring Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as Russian spies posing as a married American couple in 1980s-era Virginia, with Noah Emmerich as the FBI counterintelligence agent next door. Come for the spy intrigue, stay for the interpersonal dynamic between the so-called Jennings.

7
Pachinko
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Pachinko

2022–

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.)

6
The Crown
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The Crown

2016–2023

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.

5
The Underground Railroad
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The Underground Railroad

2021

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.

4
Band of Brothers
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Band of Brothers

2001

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.

3
Downton Abbey
Where to Stream Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey

2010–2015

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.

2
Mad Men
Where to Stream Mad Men

Mad Men

2007–2015

“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.

1
Roots
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Roots

1977

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.

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  1. G

    GoldCorn

    What utter rubbish! Here are our picks for the best period dramas of TV history - only one (# 1) is from before 2000. Where is Upstairs, Downstairs, Brideshead Revisited or The Jewel in the Crown? Downton Abbey, c'mon! An embarrassment of a list.

  2. C

    CyanAirBalloon

    Urrr...Bridgerton isn't period. It's fantasy. An alternate reality.

    1. C

      CreoleKatin

      Your school would not have taught you about a Queen that was of color. They wanted to protect your "fantasy"... can we say "critical race theory?" 🏁

  3. P

    PurpleBattery

    Where is the Gilded age?

  4. C

    CreoleKatin

    Revisionist history about peope of color has spoiled the world of so many people in the AmeriKKKas. As what was done in the dark soon comes to "period" light... How will it all be rectified?

  5. P

    PurplePopsicle

    Do you want your black history to be accurate or do you want fantasy?

  6. B

    BluePlanet

    What, are you saying there weren't black dukes or that Queen Charlotte wasn't black? Next time you're burning a cross in your front yard, (probably happens with you every weekend), make you crucify yourself first, RACIST /s

  7. B

    BluePlanet

    I was wondering, why the writer didn't include Pride and Prejudice in this list.

    Then, I figured it out: he is an idiot.

  8. O

    OrangeBottle

    You forgot Gentleman Jack. Based on a true story; taken from the diaries of Anne Lister. Only 2 seasons for now, but hoping for more. #renewGentlemanJack.

  9. B

    BlueLocomotive

    What about The Last Kingdom? Love a medieval period drama, they are rarely done.