Sumptuous costume dramas can provide a much-needed escape in troubling times, but if you’re tired of the usual assortment of airless parlours, manicured lawns, and straight-laced suitors, there is an alternative: a subset of films that play with our expectations of the genre. Combining post-punk soundtracks with cross-dressing, lobster racing, colour-blind casting, and illicit love affairs, they allow us to view history through a new lens and feel surprisingly modern as a result.
In 2022, a number of hotly anticipated films and TV shows are set to join their ranks, from the forthcoming second seasons of Bridgerton and Gentleman Jack to a fresh take on Persuasion starring Dakota Johnson, Cosmo Jarvis and Henry Golding. Ahead of their release, we shortlist 12 lavish, quick-witted, and gloriously unconventional period dramas to watch now.
Marie Antoinette (2006)
With shopping montages set to ’80s pop, salacious masked balls and midnight wanders through Versailles, Sofia Coppola’s account of the doomed French queen’s reign is gleefully subversive. As embodied by a fresh-faced Kirsten Dunst, she is an exuberant teenager who seeks solace from her loveless marriage in reckless hedonism. From the candy-coloured Manolo Blahniks to her ruffled silk ballgowns, the film is a visual feast that lets you revel in the pleasures of centuries past.
Wuthering Heights (2011)
Elemental and erotic, Andrea Arnold’s reimagining of Emily Brontë’s 19th-century novel drips with longing. It casts Solomon Glave and James Howson as younger and older incarnations of Heathcliff — the first time the Byronic hero has been played by Black actors — and Shannon Beer and Kaya Scodelario as the wild and wayward Cathy. As childhood friends, they run through misty marshes and windswept hilltops together but as adults, their love soon proves to be mutually destructive.
Belle (2013)
A remarkable true story forms the basis of Amma Asante’s swoon-worthy romance. It sees Gugu Mbatha-Raw play Dido Elizabeth Belle, the mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy captain.