Audacious women. Foolish, handsome men. Elaborate fashion choices. Questionable fashion choices. Incisive verbal sparring. Spicy kissing. If you love people wearing too many clothes on a hot day or hats bigger than their torsos, you will enjoy these witty, well-cast period dramas on Prime as much as I do.
1. Vanity Fair
With incompetent men in military uniforms, best friends calling each other out, inappropriate crushes, and a musical opening that will be in your head and have you bing watching before you know it, Vanity Fair is good from beginning to end. If you love Olivia Cooke as Alicent in House of the Dragon, you will adore her as Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair. Her incisive delivery and emotional range in VF makes the drama of this William Makepeace Thackeray adaptation worth every minute. VF is rife with witty and punchy lines that Cooke makes both flirtatious, charming, and corrective with a skill that leaves her front and center in this limited series. As one of the best period dramas on Prime, it’s delicious enough to rewatch a few times.
2. Victoria
Women in power is always a good basis for drama, and Victoria is no different. This intimate period drama about Queen Victoria’s life peers into her marriage and parenting, her relationship with her mother, and her influences on the English court. Victoria’s struggles with multiple influences and her own will to change how women are viewed in an intellectual capacity are parts of this show that I deeply enjoy. Jenna Coleman delivers a complicated Victoria who wants a loving marriage but also desires her own agency outside of her role as the queen, a modern take on the character is fit given that Queen Victoria herself modernized England.
3. The Tudors
There’s nothing more I appreciate than seeing a balding man who historically had gout and needed help getting off of his horse portrayed by a ripped guy with a modern haircut. Wait, I lied. I appreciate seeing Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn more. Everyone here who has binged nearly every British royal period drama, like me, knows that Henry VIII did not in any way look like Jonathan Rhys Meyers and that it wasn’t Henry VIII’s winning charm that got him eight wives.
Still, The Tudors is a wonderful guilty pleasure to watch for anyone who enjoys great costumes and breathy romantic scenes. It’s a great period drama to binge on Prime, and you get the bonus of more Natalie Dormer in medieval dress pre-Game of Thrones.
4. The White Princess
Jodie Comer leads the cast of The White Princess as Elizabeth of York with force, fury, and a dash of grace in this series from Starz. The story is set after Henry Tudor VII defeated York forces in 1485 and ended the War of the Roses, when he then took the English throne and married Elizabeth of York. Elizabeth’s relationships are fraught with frustration as her mother and Henry’s mother both try to control their houses through their children. Vicious politics are at play between family members, and the shock value in this show is akin to Game of Thrones. Plus, it’s Jodie Comer. Need I say more?
5. Downton Abbey
Not all period dramas involve royal families, or medieval or Victorian settings. I’m sure you’ve heard of the hit series Downton Abbey at this point. It’s six seasons of love, conflict, and trial for both the Crawley family and their servants. Something special about DA is the tender way in which the story handles hard topics like the grief of losing loved ones or dealing with sexual assault. There’s plenty of delicate and funny repartee between socialites, but there’s also good dives into the servants’ lives. I enjoy when a show covers more than just the wealthy folks, as much fun as it is to watch people worry dreadfully over which dress they shall wear at the next major social event. It’s also fun to escape into the world of servant gossip and romance. They have all the tea, literally and figuratively.
6. Love & Friendship
Love & Friendship has the honor of being the only film on this list, because it is a must-see period drama that lovers of Vanity Fair and Downton Abbey will surely get a kick out of. Kate Beckinsale is sublime in the primary role as the opinionated and gorgeous Lady Susan Vernon. The film is based on a little-known Jane Austen novel called Lady Susan and contains the very same Austen drama we all love. Insults and compliments fly back and forth through pretty language. A healthy dose of sarcasm, complicated hairdos, rude and handsome young men, and wonderful costumes get me every time I rewatch this hilarious period drama film on Prime.
7. A League of Their Own
What’s better than baseball? Women playing baseball. A League of Their Own is the kind of drama that has you laughing up until the moment you realize you care about the characters and are totally bought in. ALoTO is an endearing, hilarious, and inspiring series about the Rockford Peaches, a women’s baseball team that played in the 1940s. This show manages to cover race, sexuality, gender roles … It’s got it all. These characters feel like the full breadth and depth of a woman’s experience in a world that expects us to act in certain ways. This show is a fun ride and also an empathetic look at women’s experiences in the mid-20th century, with Abbi Jacobson and D’Arcy Carden at the helm.
8. The Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad follows fictional escaped former slave Cora as she experiences the Underground Railroad in the 1800s and navigates her fugitive status through the United States. It’s a rare gem as one of the only period pieces with Black characters front and center. TUR doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the ugliness of abuse, assault, and dehumanization in U.S. slavery, or Cora’s experience with different kinds of racism built into a system that treats her as livestock instead of a human being. Though there are certainly some creative ideas about how the real Underground Railroad operated in this series, Cora’s story is a compelling must-watch period piece.
9. Good Girls Revolt
Ah, Good Girls Revolt. What a delightful little crew this is. If you like slow burn drama shows that give you time to dive into the lives of multiple characters, GGS is for you. The salt and pepper in this show is the Mad Men ’60s and ’70s fashion and setting. The meat of the show is: being a woman in journalism has never been easy. The social battleground for women in the late ’60s and early ’70s was no joke, and one of the places that this emerged was women at work. Patti, Jane, Cindy, and other girls all have a lot to learn about their bodies, their personal agency, their legal agency, and the ACLU. GGS is a great and supposedly pretty accurate peek into the recent history of women’s civil rights.
10. Jamestown
While our favorite British royals were eating elaborate meals prepared by unseen servants and being waited on hand and foot in the 18th century, across the pond, there were British settlers. Jamestown shares the tales of women of different backgrounds who arrive at the muddy settlement town in the “New World.” There are fewer witty repartees and more earnest, down-to-earth interactions between these women and the men they know, but that makes it a different kind of emotional drama as these naive white people try to live in the wilderness. Another special part of this great period drama on Prime is that we get a look into interactions with First Nations people and neurodivergence in colonial settings. I love Jamestown for its sincerity and its window into women in colonial life.
11. Reign
Reign is essentially the Gossip Girl of royal dramas, and I say this with love for both shows. In this series that follows the experiences of Mary Stuart, commonly known as Mary Queen of Scots, the focus is more about how crazy the writers decided they could get on any given episode and less about any intelligent explorations about the roles of women in history. Honestly, that’s just fine because this show still has me shrieking in horror and delight while I say, “Girl, no!” at the TV during a rewatch. Fair warning to watch out for the sexual assault at the end of the second season; Adelaide Kane said it was the worst scene she’s ever had to film. Best to skip that episode. Costumes are not exactly period accurate, and neither is the dialogue, but I promise you will be entertained.
(featured image: Amazon Prime)
