The troublesome fortnight between the end of "Winter Costume Drama Season" and the start of "Spring Costume Drama Season" has passed and once again, we're up to our knees in headstrong young women, smugglers and windswept moors - just the way The Optimist likes it. Excuse me a moment while I blow our national trumpet, and admit that we British are the masters of costume drama - we've been stackin' em up and knockin' em down for years and I have compiled a list of my all time favourites, along with where to find them, so that you too, reader, can bask in their glorious glory whenever you so choose. Doesn't that make you incandescent with happiness?
Sense and Sensibility
Let's get Jane Austen out of the way early, and begin with the story of hers I return to again and again above all others, Sense and Sensibility. Emma Thompson's Oscar winning adaptation from 1995 is well worth a watch, but I'm a big fan of the BBC's 2008 reworking. It stars Hattie Morahan as patient, practical Elinor Dashwood and Charity Wakefield as her impulsive younger sister Marianne. Prepare to get well and truly het-up as the siblings' romances tangle and unravel. Fear not though - in the world of Jane Austen, hope is never lost for long.
BEST LINE: Anything Miss Anne Steele says.
AVAILABLE ON: DVD from the BBC Shop (It was recently shown on Drama too, so expect a repeat at some stage)
Pride and Prejudice
BEST LINE: "I have been the most unmitigated and comprehensive ass" - Charles Bingley
AVAILABLE ON: DVD - but keep an eye on ITV3, as it's been known to make an appearance every now and again
Bleak House
Let's move on to the altogether darker world of Charles Dickens now. The BBC have really been in a class of their own where adaptations of the author's challenging novels are concerned. In 2005 they assembled an incredibly impressive cast for their retelling of Bleak House. You'll need an eidetic memory to keep track of all the characters, but it's well worth sticking it out because there are dramatic-intake-of-breath inducing revelations a-plenty throughout.
BEST LINE: "Shake me up Judy" - Smallweed
AVAILABLE ON: Netflix
Little Dorrit
One of my favourite costume dramas of all time though is the BBC's 2008 adaptation of Little Dorrit. It seems all the actors in this Dickens' adaptation were taking BAFTA pills during the shoot because there's not one bad performance among them; particular attention should be paid to Russell Tovey - he will break your heart. Unassuming Little Amy Dorrit knows nothing of the Earth-shattering secret that's about to change her world (Old Charlie-boy loved his Earth-shattering secrets didn't he?) You'll have to wait right until the end of this fourteen-part masterpiece to find out what it is but you might just be too wound up in the fate of a well-hatted gentleman to care by then.
BEST SCENE: John Chivery's angry confrontation with Arthur Clennam - one of my all time favourite moments of TV. "How can you say you don't know it? Anyone with eyes could see it. These walls know it!"
AVAILABLE ON: DVD from the BBC Shop
Parade's End
Somewhere between Jane and Charles lie the final three dramas on my list. First, Susanna White's slow burning, beautifully realised adaptation of Ford Maddox Ford's Parade's End. More character than story focused, this is a frustrating, heart breaking epic that spans the length of the first world war and beyond. "Damagingly virtuous" Christopher Tietjens, played masterfully by Benedict Cumberbatch, ignores the first rule of commuting and speaks to a fellow train passenger - consequently condemning himself to married life with the spawn of Satan - we've all been there. You'll struggle to come across a more hateful character than his attention seeking wife Sylvia, played in spectacular fashion by Rebecca Hall. I was so in danger of throwing my shoe at her, I had to watch it barefoot.
BEST SCENE: The tentative carriage ride between Christopher and kindred spirit Valentine - the woman he won't allow himself to have.
AVAILABLE ON: DVD from the BBC Shop
North and South
I got more than a little excited recently when I came across my old favourite North and South on Netflix. Daniela Denby-Ashe's Margaret Hale has a pretty rubbish time of it when her father moves the family to a Yorkshire Mill town. The Southern village they used to live in is eternally bathed in sunlight and happy strangers wave to each other in slow motion - up in the dirty North it seems no one ever speaks to each other, unless they're striking of course - must be all the smog. Margaret soon gets over it though, for despite the tuberculosis and poverty there is romance still - enter Mill owner John Thornton (Richard Armitage). I've tried very hard not to use the word 'brooding' so far but I'm about to fail disastrously because my mental thesaurus refuses to find any other word to describe JT. He's the broodiest of brooding brooders that ever brooded ... brood.
BEST SCENE: The train station scene (I don't want to give too much away) you'll understand when you see it
AVAILABLE ON: Netflix
Jane Eyre
In 2006, the BBC entrusted Charlotte Brontë's iconic heroine to screenwriter Sandy Welch and Director Susanna White, who outdid themselves with this masterful adaptation. Be warned, the first episode's bleak, (and when I say bleak I mean 'bleaker than Bleak House' bleak) but hang on in there because it's important and there's a hell of a cliffhanger at the end - if you can resist instantly watching the second episode after that, you're a better woman than I. The fiery affair between Jane and her enigmatic boss Mr Rochester has to be one of the best romances ever written, but it's not unshakeable. Either someone's hung their delicates to dry out of that upstairs window, or there's something mysterious lurking in the tower at Fairfield Hall. Lock your door after sunset.
BEST SCENE: The thunderstorm - ooooh, the passion!
AVAILABLE ON: Netflix
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