# The best British period dramas

Country houses, bonnets, Tudors and Birmingham gangs: the finest British costume dramas on TV, based on Collider, The Silver Petticoat Review and The List.

- 145 votes · 14 items
- Apr 6, 2025 · Charlie Turner
- https://even.best/en/l/4087/the-best-british-period-dramas

## Top 10

1. **Downton Abbey (2010-2015)** (14 · ▲15 ▼1) — The Crawleys and their servants, from the Titanic to the 1920s.
2. **Call the Midwife (2012-)** (14 · ▲15 ▼1) — Midwives in London's East End in the 1950s and 60s.
3. **Peaky Blinders (2013-2022)** (12 · ▲12 ▼0) — Tommy Shelby's gang in post-war Birmingham.
4. **The Crown (2016-2023)** (11 · ▲11 ▼0) — The reign of Elizabeth II, decade by decade.
5. **North & South (2004)** (11 · ▲11 ▼0) — Elizabeth Gaskell's mill-town romance.
6. **Pride and Prejudice (1995)** (8 · ▲10 ▼2) — Andrew Davies's adaptation, with Colin Firth's Mr Darcy.
7. **Wolf Hall (2015)** (8 · ▲9 ▼1) — Thomas Cromwell at Henry VIII's court, from Hilary Mantel.
8. **Brideshead Revisited (1981)** (7 · ▲10 ▼3) — Evelyn Waugh's aristocratic Oxford, tenth on the BFI TV 100.
9. **Upstairs, Downstairs (1971-1975)** (7 · ▲9 ▼2) — The original masters-and-servants drama in Belgravia.
10. **Poldark (2015-2019)** (7 · ▲7 ▼0) — A soldier back from war in 18th-century Cornwall.
11. **Bleak House (2005)** (6 · ▲6 ▼0) — Dickens's endless lawsuit, with Gillian Anderson.
12. **Cranford (2007)** (6 · ▲6 ▼0) — Gossip and change in a small Cheshire town.
13. **Victoria (2016-2019)** (4 · ▲6 ▼2) — The young Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
14. **Gentleman Jack (2019-2022)** (2 · ▲4 ▼2) — Landowner and diarist Anne Lister in 1830s Halifax.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.