87 Our selection of historical TV drama series to stream
Our series exploring the best historical entertainment to enjoy, without leaving the house, continues with some of our favourite small-screen episodic dramas. All are available to stream now via online providers
Pose
BBC iPlayer*
This series immerses viewers in New York’s 1980s underground ball scene, in which queer people performed in a range of competitive categories in the hope of snagging trophies. Social issues abound, from LGBTQ identity and the Aids crisis to the challenges of surviving in a city in which wealth was increasingly seen as the ultimate goal. The show walks the line between fact and fiction: legendary ballroom figure Hector of House :travaganza consulted on the series, and although its drag ‘houses’, or constructed families, are fictionalised, they are heavily inspired by real 198 s examples. As such it offers a window into the lives of people who have historically been overlooked.
Rhiannon Davies Subeditor
Mrs America
BBC iPlayer*
This critically acclaimed, 1970s-set series is based on the real stories of feminists who fought to pass an amendment to the United States constitution ensuring equal rights for all citizens, whatever their sex. (irst mooted back in the 1920s, the proposal gained new support thanks to the rise of the US women’s movement – but, as portrayed here, was met with staunch opposition from conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly (Cate Blanchett). This battle, and the ways in which it changed the political landscape, make for gripping TV.
Rachel Dickens Senior deputy art editor
Wolf Hall
Amazon Prime
How do you do justice to a pair of novels so acclaimed that they earned Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s lowborn fixer, a seat at history’s top table? The answer is to cast actors of the calibre of Mark Rylance and Claire Foy, and produce a drama series so nuanced, so visceral and so keenly observed that you almost feel yourself being immersed in Tudor England. Rylance (playing Cromwell) offers an understated masterclass – his face alone tells a thousand stories. And this is a story told quite brilliantly.
Spencer Mizen Production editor
The Durrells
ITV Hub*
Anyone whose holiday plans have been scuppered this summer should look no further than The Durrells for a slice of sundrenched escapism. Adapted from naturalist Gerald Durrell’s memoir My Family and Other Animals, this irresistibly frothy period drama follows a widowed mother and her squabbling children as they relocate to a crumbling mansion in 1930s Corfu. With steamy island romances, sibling rivalries, escaped convicts and a misadventure involving bats in a toilet, this is comfort viewing in its purest form.
Ellie Cawthorne Section editor
The Trial of Christine Keeler
BBC iPlayer*
Christine (Sophie Cookson) is a fun-loving and confident, yet vulnerable, young woman. Still a teenager when she begins an affair with John Profumo (Ben Miles), she is soon drawn into a web of lies, cover-ups and exploitation – not least by the hungry press. Christine’s friend Stephen Ward (James Norton) shaped her destiny, yet his ‘little baby’ ends up telling her own story. Written and directed by a female team, this dramatisation of the 1960s scandal reveals the era’s hollow morals and the way in which society was built on misogyny.
Susanne Frank Art editor
Vikings
Amazon Prime
Atmospheric, brutal, and certainly the only series on this list in which a character is thrown into a pit of snakes – unless there’s a particularly dark episode of The Durrells that I’ve somehow missed – this series isn’t for everyone. Indeed, some moments are so bloody, I wasn’t convinced it was necessarily for me. But somehow Michael Hirst’s Norse drama keeps you hooked, whether through its mix of swordplay and spirituality or the way that it draws on the sagas of legendary Viking figure Ragnar Lothbrok.
Matt Elton World history editor