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Period dramas can offer up a gripping mixture of tension, romance and intrigue. But with so many options across so many streaming services, where should you start? Well, our critics have done the hard work for you by sifting through copies choices to bring you an unmissable selection of 30 options that will whisk you back in time to the excitement and emotion of long-past eras.

The Hallmark Channel has race-swapped nearly the entire cast for their upcoming adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. Sense and Sensibility was the first novel written by Jane Austen and is set in the late 18th century. It follows two sisters Marianne and Elinor who find themselves in tough circumstances after the death of their father, who leaves his fortune to his eldest son from his first marriage. The two sisters, their mother, and their third sister leave their home and move in with a cousin.

"I noticed that he threw -- um -- Vivek under the bus. I've seen a candidate run for an office and basically campaign for another candidate in the same race before, but that's what's happened. And the minute he wasn't useful they dropped the hammer on him. That's just the way they are. We're going to go forward as a party. We can go forward in a way that's focused on peoples' issues and a great agenda for America, or we can go forward with Trump, which will be focused, the 2024 election, on legal issues, criminal trials, convictions, on...

By their very nature, period dramas are supposed to transport viewers to a different time realm. But while the genre has sky-rocketed in popularity of late, there's one aspect of the dramas that appear to be keeping them firmly grounded in the 21st Century: the casts' cosmetically enhanced faces. Earlier this month, the new series 10 Pound Poms - starring Michelle Keegan and Faye Marsay - started airing on BBC One.

Taking the real historic phenomena of fasting girls who claimed they could survive without food that were reported throughout Ireland after the Great Irish Famine, an adaptation of a novel “The Wonder” is available on Netflix. The brief plot summary is an English nurse, Mrs. Elizabeth Wright, played by Florence Pugh, is hired to watch over a fasting girl, Anna O’Donnell, in Ireland. Mrs. Wright was with Florence Nightingale at Scutari during the Crimea War. An Irish reporter for the Daily Telegraph, Mr. William Bryne, shows up at the village to do his own investigating. The story has the typical...

His adaptation of A Christmas Carol portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge as a molested schoolboy who grew up to force Tiny Tim’s mother into prostitution. So perhaps it’s no surprise that Steven Knight’s BBC1 version of Great Expectations turns Miss Havisham, played by Olivia Colman, into an opium addict and shows an ecstatic Mr Pumblechook being spanked in a dingy bedroom. He has also included references to the British Empire’s connections to the slave trade, with several characters hammering home an anti-colonial message.

BBC and FX have released the first full trailer for Steven Knight's forthcoming adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Olivia Colman, 49, leads a star-studded cast in the eerie and twisted two-minute teaser as she transforms into jilted once-bride-to-be Miss Havisham. Dunkirk actor Fionn Whitehead, 25, plays orphan Pip in the new production opposite Line Of Duty actress Shalom Brune-Franklin, 28, as his love interest Estella.

Olivia Colman looks unrecognisable with white hair and yellow teeth in the first teaser trailer for BBC's upcoming adaptation of Great Expectations. The actress, 49, who plays Miss Havisham in the Charles Dickens classic, welcomes a young Pip (Tom Sweet) to Satis House for the first time in the footage.

The Wonder (15, 108mins) Verdict: Compelling period drama Rating: **** The 2017 film Disobedience received oodles of critical acclaim without ever quite getting the audiences it deserved. It was about a woman, played by Rachel Weisz, ostracised by the strictly orthodox Jewish community in which she’d grown up in London after falling romantically for another woman. Disobedience was an auspicious English-language debut by talented Chilean director Sebastian Leilo, and in The Wonder, his third film in English (the second was another corker, Gloria Bell, with Julianne Moore), Leilo tackles some of the same subjects: religious intensity, a woman’s refusal to...

A study found that 42% of people with regular menstrual cycles said they bled more heavily than usual after their Covid vaccination. When adults gained access to Covid vaccines last year, most knew to expect headaches, fatigue and soreness as side effects. But some researchers think it’s time to add another common one to the list: temporary menstrual changes. An analysis published Friday in the journal Science Advances found that 42% of people with regular menstrual cycles said they bled more heavily than usual after vaccination. Meanwhile, 44% reported no change and around 14% reported a lighter period. Among nonmenstruating...

Jane Austen fans were far from persuaded by Netflix's trailer for its upcoming adaptation of Persuasion. The streaming service released a two-minute-long trailer for the movie starring Dakota Johnson as the self-effacing heroine Anne Elliot, which is due to hit the screens on July 15. In spite of being set in the 19th century, the dialogue in the movie adaptation uses modern phrases - such as referring to Anne's former flame Captain Frederik Wentworth, played by Cosmo Jarvis, as an 'ex,' which has not landed well with purists of the period romance genre.

Back To The Future, Eyes Wide Shut and True Lies are fine examples of cinematic oxymorons - film titles which contradict themselves. And joining them last night was Downton Abbey: A New Era, which predictably plunges us straight back into Downton Abbey, the old era. Downton’s creator Julian Fellowes did not get where he is today (the House of Lords, for starters) by denying his fans what they expect. So the new film, the second big-screen spin-off after 2019’s Downton Abbey, positively bursts with all our favourite ingredients, not least the Dowager Countess of Grantham (Dame Maggie Smith) firing acid...

A new drug with the potential to treat endometriosis-associated pain with very few side effects is getting closer to official approval. Endometriosis is a chronic inflammatory condition and the leading cause of pelvic pain worldwide. With no known cause or cure, many patients have run out of options and are living with chronic and unrelenting symptoms. Safe and effective long-term treatments that can help patients live pain-free lives are desperately needed, and yet to date, very few drugs have been approved for clinical use. Those that have, like elagolix and leuprorelin (aka Orilissa and Lupron), don't work for everyone and...

A new adaptation of Jules Verne classic Around The World In 80 Days has been dismissed as 'woke nonsense' by furious BBC license payers. The eight-part adaptation starring David Tennant as globetrotting Phileas Fogg launched on Boxing Day, but a series of socially conscious tweaks to the legendary tale left viewers choking on their turkey sandwiches. Two notable departures from Verne's original 1872 text sees Passepartout, Fogg's loyal valet, played by a black actor - French star Ibrahim Koma - while Detective Fix also gets a modern-day makeover.

The UK is reducing its COVID-19 isolation period from 10 to seven days starting Wednesday for people who get a negative rapid test two days in a row. The UK Health Security Agency, which is the equivalent of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, made the decision as the Omicron variant spreads rapidly across the country. As cases surge, many industries have been left short-staffed in the past week as workers who test positive have to isolate. “We want to reduce the disruption from COVID-19 to people’s everyday lives,” Health Secretary Sajid Javid said. The British health agency...

The House Jan. 6 panel on Wednesday acknowledged altering a text Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, had forwarded to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to The Federalist. The text, originally sent by attorney Joseph Schmitz to Jordan, included a three-paragraph legal summary of a four-page legal memo that Schmitz had written regarding congressional certification of the 2020 presidential electoral vote count, which Jordan subsequently forwarded to Meadows. On Wednesday, the Jan. 6 committee acknowledged that it had altered a text Jordan had forwarded to Meadows. The Federalist reported that the text was edited by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.,...

Joy Behar told her co-hosts Thursday on ABC’s “The View” that the Republican Party was driving America into a “new version of the dark ages.” Co-host Whoopi Goldberg said, “Earlier this week, Tennessee fired their top vaccine official for giving guidance on taking the vaccine for teenagers. And now, you know, as the U.S. surgeon general issues a dire warning of the urgent threat posed by anti-vax misinformation. The state just doubled down by halting all teen outreach on vaccinations for any disease. Now is this the smartest way to go, do you think, Joy? Or should they, you know,...

A lot of times when I post about period dramas, many Freepers rave about Downton Abbey. I finally took the plunge. I will not go into the plot but make some observations. In my mind the show is conservative. The Earl of Grantham views himself as a steward of the family tradition, including the estate, even if it comes at a cost to his own family. For the Downstairs component, the butler Mr. Carson holds onto the importance of tradition. The eye candy is top notch. Highclaire Castle is beautiful and refined. Although the story has the estate in Yorkshire...

I finished Dickens’ “Dombey and Son” as part of a group read on the Goodreads site. I found the novel a classic. I blew ahead of the schedule of the group read as I could not put the novel down. As I am wont to do, I enjoy seeing adaptations of the 19th century novels I read. I found this French adaptation from 2007 free for Amazon Prime members. Of course, the dialogue is in French so I followed via the subtitles. The adaptation is broken up into two parts with a little over a 3 hour run time. As...

Disclaimer: I must admit I have never read a biography of Queen Victoria. My knowledge of her as a person has been accumulated by reading articles, mentions in non-fiction books, watching documentaries, and listening to podcasts. As a side note, if you are interested in the Victorians the “Age of Victoria” podcast is excellent. Just like season 2, season 3 starts with a bang. It is 1848 and one sees King of the French Louis Philippe preparing to disguise himself as a common working man to escape his father’s fate via the National Razor. In Britain, the Hungry Forties and...