The Victorian era (1837-1901) holds an enduring fascination for television producers and audiences alike. This period of dramatic social change, industrial revolution, imperial expansion, and stark inequality provides rich material for storytelling. From the glittering ballrooms of the wealthy to the fog-shrouded streets where Jack the Ripper prowled, Victorian Britain offers settings both romantic and terrifying.
British television returns to the Victorian era repeatedly, finding in its contradictions—progress and poverty, propriety and hypocrisy, scientific advancement and supernatural belief—endless dramatic possibilities. The era’s visual richness translates beautifully to screen, with its distinctive fashions, architecture, and atmospheric gas-lit streets providing production designers with opportunities for stunning recreation.
Victorian television encompasses multiple genres: literary adaptations, crime dramas, social sagas, and supernatural tales all find natural homes in this period. The era’s literature—Dickens, Gaskell, Eliot, Hardy, Collins—provides ready-made source material, while original dramas explore corners of Victorian life that contemporary writers couldn’t address openly.
Here are 25 television shows that bring the Victorian era vividly to life.
1. Bleak House (2005)
Network: BBC One
Episodes: 15
Starring: Gillian Anderson, Anna Maxwell Martin, Charles Dance, Carey Mulligan
Period: 1850s
Andrew Davies’s masterful adaptation of Dickens’s sprawling novel about the corrupting Chancery court system proved that even the most complex Victorian fiction could work on television. The innovative half-hour episode format kept pace relentless, while an exceptional cast brought Dickens’s gallery of characters to life. Gillian Anderson’s cold Lady Dedlock and Charles Dance’s menacing Tulkinghorn anchored a production that captured both Dickens’s social anger and his gift for storytelling.
2. North and South (2004)
Network: BBC One
Episodes: 4
Starring: Daniela Denby-Ashe, Richard Armitage, Sinéad Cusack, Brendan Coyle
Period: 1850s
Elizabeth Gaskell’s industrial novel became a beloved romantic drama, with Richard Armitage’s mill owner John Thornton becoming a romantic icon. The show captured the clash between southern gentility and northern industry during Britain’s manufacturing revolution, while the love story between Margaret Hale and Thornton provided emotional stakes. The portrayal of mill conditions and labor conflict gave the romance social context.
3. Ripper Street (2012-2016)
Network: BBC One/Amazon Prime
Seasons: 5
Starring: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg
Period: 1889-1899
Set in Whitechapel in the immediate aftermath of Jack the Ripper’s murders, this gritty drama followed H Division as they policed the East End’s most dangerous streets. Matthew Macfadyen’s Inspector Reid led a team investigating crimes that reflected the era’s tensions around immigration, women’s rights, and technological change. The show’s unflinching portrayal of Victorian poverty and violence balanced with genuine period atmosphere.
4. The Woman in White (2018)
Network: BBC One
Episodes: 5
Starring: Ben Hardy, Olivia Vinall, Jessie Buckley, Dougray Scott
Period: 1850s
Wilkie Collins’s sensation novel received a fresh adaptation, following the mysterious woman who accosts Walter Hartright on a moonlit road and the conspiracy that unfolds. The Gothic atmosphere and complex plot of deception and identity made for gripping drama, while the period setting highlighted the vulnerability of women under Victorian law.
5. Cranford (2007-2009)
Network: BBC One
Episodes: 7
Starring: Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins, Imelda Staunton, Michael Gambon
Period: 1840s
Elizabeth Gaskell’s stories about genteel ladies in a small English town became a warm, beautifully produced drama. A murderer’s row of British acting talent portrayed the eccentric residents navigating railways, changing times, and matters of the heart. The show balanced comedy with genuine emotion, celebrating community while acknowledging the era’s constraints.
6. Penny Dreadful (2014-2016)
Network: Showtime/Sky Atlantic
Seasons: 3
Starring: Eva Green, Josh Hartnett, Timothy Dalton, Rory Kinnear
Period: 1890s
John Logan’s Gothic horror brought together Victorian literary monsters—Dracula, Frankenstein’s creature, Dorian Gray—in a dark vision of London’s supernatural underworld. Eva Green’s Vanessa Ives anchored the horror with a performance of extraordinary intensity, while the show explored themes of faith, sexuality, and the nature of evil. The production design created a beautifully decadent Gothic London.
7. Great Expectations (2011)
Network: BBC One
Episodes: 3
Starring: Douglas Booth, Gillian Anderson, Ray Winstone, David Suchet
Period: 1810s-1840s
Dickens’s bildungsroman about orphan Pip and his mysterious benefactor received atmospheric treatment, with Gillian Anderson’s Miss Havisham memorably unhinged in her rotting wedding dress. The adaptation captured Dickens’s critique of Victorian social climbing and the hollowness of “expectations” built on tainted foundations.
8. Little Dorrit (2008)
Network: BBC One
Episodes: 14
Starring: Claire Foy, Matthew Macfadyen, Andy Serkis, Tom Courtenay
Period: 1820s-1850s
Another Davies-Dickens collaboration, this adaptation explored the debtors’ prison system through the Dorrit family and the sprawling cast connected to them. Claire Foy’s luminous Amy Dorrit provided the moral center, while the show captured Dickens’s anger at systems that imprisoned the poor while the corrupt flourished.
9. Tess of the D’Urbervilles (2008)
Network: BBC One
Episodes: 4
Starring: Gemma Arterton, Eddie Redmayne, Hans Matheson
Period: 1880s
Thomas Hardy’s tragic heroine found sympathetic portrayal in this adaptation. Gemma Arterton’s Tess, destroyed by men’s hypocrisy and Victorian double standards about female purity, made Hardy’s social critique painfully relevant. The Dorset locations provided authentic beauty for a story about the impossibility of escape from circumstance.
10. The Crimson Petal and the White (2011)
Network: BBC Two
Episodes: 4
Starring: Romola Garai, Chris O’Dowd, Gillian Anderson
Period: 1870s
Michel Faber’s novel about a prostitute who schemes her way into respectable society became an unflinching drama about sex, class, and survival. Romola Garai’s Sugar was intelligent and determined, navigating a world where women’s options were brutally limited. The show portrayed the era’s extremes of wealth and poverty without romanticizing either.
11. Oliver Twist (2007)
Network: BBC One
Episodes: 5
Starring: William Miller, Timothy Spall, Tom Hardy, Sophie Okonedo
Period: 1830s
Dickens’s most famous orphan received another adaptation, with Timothy Spall’s Fagin and Tom Hardy’s Bill Sikes providing memorable villainy. The show captured the dangerous world of Victorian London’s criminal underclass while following Oliver’s search for belonging and identity.
12. The Forsyte Saga (2002-2003)
Network: ITV
Episodes: 13
Starring: Damian Lewis, Gina McKee, Rupert Graves
Period: 1870s-1920s
John Galsworthy’s family saga, beginning in the 1870s, traced the wealthy Forsyte family through social upheaval. Damian Lewis’s possessive Soames Forsyte was both villain and victim of his era’s values, while the saga explored how Victorian certainties gave way to modern anxieties.
13. Daniel Deronda (2002)
Network: BBC One
Episodes: 4
Starring: Hugh Dancy, Romola Garai, Hugh Bonneville, Jodhi May
Period: 1860s-1870s
George Eliot’s final novel, exploring identity and belonging through a young man who discovers his Jewish heritage, received careful adaptation. The show balanced the romantic plot with Eliot’s serious engagement with Victorian anti-Semitism and the nascent Zionist movement.
14. Fingersmith (2005)
Network: BBC One
Episodes: 3
Starring: Sally Hawkins, Elaine Cassidy, Imelda Staunton
Period: 1860s
Sarah Waters’s neo-Victorian thriller about a con involving an heiress, a thief, and a sinister uncle delivered twist upon twist. The show explored lesbianism in Victorian England while providing gripping drama. The Gothic atmosphere and intricate plot made it a standout literary adaptation.
15. The Moonstone (2016)
Network: BBC One
Episodes: 5
Starring: John Thomson, Terenia Edwards, David Calder
Period: 1850s
Wilkie Collins’s detective novel—often considered the first in the genre—traced the disappearance of a valuable Indian diamond. The adaptation captured the novel’s multiple perspectives and exotic elements while exploring Victorian attitudes toward empire and the Other.
16. Taboo (2017)
Network: BBC One/FX
Seasons: 1
Starring: Tom Hardy, Oona Chaplin, David Hayman, Jonathan Pryce
Period: 1814 (Regency, but Victorian in sensibility)
Tom Hardy created and starred in this dark drama about a man returned from Africa to claim his inheritance and battle the East India Company. While technically Regency, the show’s Gothic atmosphere and themes of colonial exploitation align it with Victorian concerns. Hardy’s James Delaney was magnificently menacing.
17. Quacks (2017)
Network: BBC Two
Episodes: 6
Starring: Rory Kinnear, Mathew Baynton, Tom Basden, Lydia Leonard
Period: 1840s
This too-brief comedy about Victorian surgeons found humor in early medicine’s horrors. From surgery without anesthesia to dubious treatments, the show explored the gap between medical confidence and actual knowledge. Rory Kinnear led an ensemble playing doctors whose methods seem barbaric now but represented cutting-edge practice then.
18. Harlots (2017-2019)
Network: ITV Encore/Hulu
Seasons: 3
Starring: Samantha Morton, Lesley Manville, Jessica Brown Findlay
Period: 1760s (Georgian, but included for style)
[Georgian period, replacing with Victorian entry]
18. The Frankenstein Chronicles (2015-2017)
Network: ITV Encore
Seasons: 2
Starring: Sean Bean, Tom Ward, Anna Maxwell Martin
Period: 1820s-1830s
Sean Bean played an inspector investigating murders that echo Mary Shelley’s recently published novel. The show mixed crime drama with Gothic horror, exploring early Victorian anxieties about science, resurrection, and the nature of life itself. The dark atmosphere and Bean’s weathered performance created compelling viewing.
19. Victoria (2016-2019)
Network: ITV
Seasons: 3
Starring: Jenna Coleman, Tom Hughes, Rufus Sewell
Period: 1837-1850s
The queen who gave the era its name received sympathetic dramatization, from her accession at 18 through her passionate marriage to Prince Albert. Jenna Coleman’s Victoria was spirited and stubborn, navigating constitutional crises and palace intrigue while building a marriage that would define royal romance for generations.
20. The Mill (2013-2014)
Network: Channel 4
Seasons: 2
Starring: Kerrie Hayes, Matthew McNulty, Barbara Marten
Period: 1830s-1840s
Based on real records from Quarry Bank Mill, this drama depicted the lives of apprentice workers in the textile industry. The show pulled no punches about industrial exploitation while finding hope in characters’ resistance and solidarity. A valuable portrait of working-class Victorian experience.
21. Desperate Romantics (2009)
Network: BBC Two
Episodes: 6
Starring: Aidan Turner, Samuel Barnett, Rafe Spall, Amy Manson
Period: 1850s
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood—artists who scandalized and transformed Victorian art—received irreverent dramatization. The show portrayed Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Millais, and their circle as dissolute geniuses whose personal lives matched their revolutionary aesthetic. Aidan Turner’s Rossetti was magnetic and self-destructive.
22. Lark Rise to Candleford (2008-2011)
Network: BBC One
Seasons: 4
Starring: Olivia Hallinan, Julia Sawalha, Brendan Coyle
Period: 1890s
Flora Thompson’s memoirs of rural Oxfordshire became gentle drama about life in the hamlet of Lark Rise and market town of Candleford. The show captured the rhythms of agricultural life at the Victorian era’s end, when change was coming but tradition still held. Julia Sawalha’s postmistress Dorcas Lane provided warmth and wit.
23. The Secret Agent (2016)
Network: BBC One
Episodes: 3
Starring: Toby Jones, Vicky McClure, Stephen Graham
Period: 1886
Joseph Conrad’s novel about anarchists and double agents in London received a taut adaptation. Toby Jones played Verloc, the shopkeeper secretly working for a foreign embassy, drawn into a bombing plot with tragic consequences. The show explored Victorian anxieties about terrorism and surveillance that resonate today.
24. The Living and the Dead (2016)
Network: BBC One
Episodes: 6
Starring: Colin Morgan, Charlotte Spencer
Period: 1894
This supernatural drama followed a psychologist who returns to his Somerset estate and encounters phenomena his science cannot explain. The show combined folk horror with Victorian scientific rationalism, creating a genuinely unsettling atmosphere. The isolated rural setting and psychological complexity made for distinctive viewing.
25. Dickensian (2015-2016)
Network: BBC One
Episodes: 20
Starring: Tuppence Middleton, Stephen Rea, Peter Firth, Caroline Quentin
Period: 1840s
This ambitious experiment placed characters from multiple Dickens novels together in a single London neighborhood. Fagin’s gang, Miss Havisham before her heartbreak, and the Cratchits all interacted in a serialized drama that imagined shared histories for Dickens’s creations. While only lasting one series, it was a creative and affectionate tribute to Victorian London’s greatest chronicler.
Conclusion
The Victorian era continues to fascinate because it feels both distant and familiar. The period’s struggles—between progress and inequality, scientific rationalism and religious faith, imperial confidence and moral doubt—echo into our own time. Television finds in the Victorian age a setting rich enough to support every genre from romance to horror, from social realism to supernatural fantasy.
British television’s access to authentic locations, trained actors comfortable in period style, and cultural familiarity with Victorian history gives it an advantage in depicting the era. The shows listed here represent the best of that advantage, bringing the 19th century to life with skill, intelligence, and often surprising relevance to contemporary concerns.
For Anglophiles drawn to crinolines and chimney sweeps, to gaslight and Gothic mysteries, Victorian television offers extraordinary riches. These 25 shows demonstrate the era’s endless dramatic potential and British television’s mastery in exploring it.
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