From ‘Downton Abbey’ to ‘Bridgerton’ and ‘The Gilded Age,’ historical drama is having a renaissance

Blame it on Mr. Pamuk.

As far as Gareth Neame is concerned, the scene in the first season of “Downton Abbey” in which the Turkish diplomat scandalously expired in Lady Mary’s bed put TV viewers on notice: this wasn’t your same old period drama.

That storyline “really sort of blew people’s socks off and (they) thought, ‘Oh, this isn’t really what we would normally get with this kind of show,’” said Neame, executive producer of “Downton,” chatting by video from his London home.

You can certainly draw a line of sorts between randy Mr. Pamuk and the steamy sex scenes of “Bridgerton” — about to debut its second season — which set the world swooning for the dashing Duke of Hastings (British actor Regé-Jean Page) and became Netflix’s most watched series in 2020.

But Chris Van Dusen, who created “Bridgerton,” goes back even further for inspiration: to the 1995 BBC miniseries of the Jane Austen novel “Pride and Prejudice.”

“It’s the one that has Colin Firth emerging from a lake in his white shirt” — a scene that turned British actor Firth into a pre-social media sex symbol. “That scene was revolutionary at the time because it hadn’t been done before,” Van Dusen said by email. “That’s what I was interested in doing with ‘Bridgerton’ too … pushing a few boundaries and challenging the very idea of what a period piece could be.”

What “Downton” kicked off in 2010, and what “Bridgerton” continues, is no less than a period drama renaissance.

Consider that in just the first two months of 2022 we’ve seen a new adaptation of Jules Verne’s 1870s novel “Around the World in 80 Days”; Season 2 of 1930s veterinary drama “All Creatures Great and Small”; Canada’s 1920s-set “The Porter”; and “The Gilded Age,” the Julian Fellowes-created show about 1880s New York society of which Neame is an executive producer.

March, meanwhile, brings new seasons of “Bridgerton,” time travel drama “Outlander” and “Sanditon,” based on an unfinished Jane Austen novel, with plenty more period TV to come.

Starz, for instance, will this year debut “Becoming Elizabeth,” about the teenage years of Queen Elizabeth I of England; “Dangerous Liaisons,” based on the 18th-century French novel of the same name; and “The Serpent Queen,” about 16th-century French ruler Catherine de’ Medici.

FX and the BBC recently announced casting for a miniseries based on Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations,” led by Oscar winner Olivia Colman, a.k.a. the second Queen Elizabeth II in royal period drama “The Crown.”

Neame, who was already a celebrated TV producer before he lit the spark that became Fellowes’ “Downton Abbey,” isn’t shy about giving that show credit for this period TV boom.

“I don’t think it is overstating it at all to say that it took this most British of genres that always had a dedicated audience (and) really took it to the mainstream in a way that nothing had before,” Neame said. “I think you easily could argue there would not have been ‘The Crown’ without it; there would not have been ‘Bridgerton.’”

Both he and Van Dusen were fans of period drama before their respective megahits.

There have been some legendary period shows over the decades, not just the aforementioned “Pride and Prejudice,” but “The Forsyte Saga” in 1968-’69, “Upstairs, Downstairs” in 1971, “Brideshead Revisited” in 1981 and “The Thorn Birds” in 1983.

“I’ve always loved period dramas, but they’re often considered a bit traditional and conservative,” Van Dusen said. “What really got me excited about creating (‘Bridgerton’) was the idea of being able to make the period show I myself have always wanted to see. I knew that wasn’t going to look or feel like any period show I’ve ever seen before.

“My real starting point was figuring out a way to take this world of Regency London and reimagine it in a new and exciting way,” he added. “That meant infusing everything with my own modern, unique sensibility — and that went for everything from the storytelling to our casting to our set design to our costumes to our music to even the way the show is edited.”

“Bridgerton” made a particular splash for casting actors of colour in key roles. While the Bridgerton siblings are white, the Duke of Hastings is Black as is Queen Charlotte, played by Guyanese-British actor Golda Rosheuvel, and influential aristocrat Lady Danbury (British actor Adjoa Andoh). When Season 2 debuts on Netflix March 25, the leading lady — love interest to Viscount Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) — will be Kate Sharma, an Indian woman played by Simone Ashley, a British actor of Indian descent.

“Downton” was criticized by some for its whiteness, casting its first and only Black character in its fourth season, jazz musician Jack Ross (Gary Carr), who had a brief and unsatisfying romance with the white Lady Rose. “The Gilded Age,” on the other hand, has a Black main character, secretary and aspiring writer Peggy Scott (Denée Benton), who’s one of the best things about the show. She’s seen not only in relation to her white employer but her middle class Black parents and the Black-run newspaper for which she writes.

“Sanditon,” which returns to PBS March 20, also has a Black lead character in feisty heiress Georgiana Lambe (American actor Crystal Clarke).

To Belinda Campbell, one of the executive producers of “Sanditon,” the female characters are the key to the series, something that could be said of many period dramas.

Even in 1995, Elizabeth Bennet (Jennifer Ehle) was a force to be reckoned with in “Pride and Prejudice,” but strong women are a particular hallmark of recent shows. “Bridgerton,” for instance, is chockablock with formidable women, intent on forging their own paths within the strictures of Regency society.

Of course, no matter how protofeminist the characters, romance is still a raison d’être of period dramas.

“Bridgerton” has excelled in that area, and if you think last season’s courtship between the duke and Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) was swoon-worthy, wait until you see Anthony and Kate alternately sparring with and lusting after each other.

“Bridgerton” also made its mark by including frank sex scenes, which is not something every period show can get away with.

“Sanditon,” for instance, got pushback over a sex scene in its first season, although it was much less explicit than anything on “Bridgerton.”

“Audiences don’t expect to go there” on PBS’s “Masterpiece,” Neame said. “And obviously, ‘Bridgerton’ is a Netflix show and audiences very much to expect to go there. The same could be said of an HBO show” … though don’t expect to see Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson) in a “Bridgerton”-style clinch with suitor Tom Raikes (Thomas Cocquerel) anytime soon.

Despite airing on HBO, “Gilded,” Neame said, is “not really an explicit sort of show.”

One ingredient he does think every good period series needs is comedy to leaven the drama, something “Downton” brought to the fore.

“Even in our darkest days, we still laugh, and even when things are going well for us there are sad things that happen, and our whole lives are a mix of that,” Neame said.

“The Gilded Age” has continued in that vein, with Christine Baranski’s society stalwart Agnes Van Rhijn the Dowager Countess-style dispenser of quips. As for “Bridgerton,” there are more comic situations in the series than you can shake Lady Danbury’s stick at.

Throw in the visual delights of costumes and sets — whether it’s “Bridgerton’s” candy-coloured dresses or rooms that would be at home in a French chateaux in the Russells’ “Gilded Age” mansion — and you have another factor in the appeal of period dramas.

“At the end of the day, ‘Bridgerton’ is a beautiful, escapist world that you’re entering,” Van Dusen said. “The Regency period especially was a fascinating time of decadence and excess and beauty.”

Viewers wouldn’t necessarily want to linger in those escapist worlds, of course, if it wasn’t for the people who inhabit them.

“We explore really human issues,” said Caitriona Balfe, who plays time traveller Claire, explaining the appeal of “Outlander”: marriage and family “and loyalty and what home really is.”

“We really feel that we’ve lived with that family,” Neame said of “Downton’s” Crawley clan. “We’ve seen them get older and we’ve seen them have all of the ups and downs that any normal family have.”

It’s especially important that viewers can relate to those stories, regardless of the period trappings, Campbell said, whether it’s Lady Babington (Charlotte Spencer) struggling with infertility in “Sanditon” or Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon), in Neame’s words, carrying on like a 19th-century Real Housewife of New York.

“No matter the time period, the human experience is timeless,” said Crystal Clarke.

Debra Yeo is a deputy editor and a contributor to the Star’s Entertainment section. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @realityeo