The Story of the Costume Drama

An overview of the genre, from its beginnings with swashbuckling series The Adventures of Robin Hood to classic period dramas such as The Forsyte Saga, Upstairs, Downstairs and Brideshead Revisited. This episode traces the changes the genre has undergone in its 50-year history and speaks to stars including Susan Hampshire, Timothy West, Derek Jacobi, John Hurt, Anthony Andrews, Alex Kingston and Art Malik.

Costume dramas ignited young performers' careers and benefited from the glow of established stars. Alex Kingston's Moll Flanders led her to ER, and Keira Knightley's Lara in Doctor Zhivago got Hollywood calling. Conversely, Sex and the City's Kim Cattrall and Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe defied typecasting in My Boy Jack.

The "bodice rippers" of the 1990s helped costume dramas shed their staid reputation as quickly as characters doffed their period garb. Colin Firth's wet-shirt scene in Pride and Prejudice and the romps of Moll Flanders epitomized a slew of saucy literary adaptations. Earlier dramas like Edward the King exposed royal infidelities.

The pursuit of high production values drove costume dramas out of the studio and into real castles and countryside. Castle Howard attracted tourists after appearing in Brideshead Revisited, rugged Cornwall lent local color to action-packed Poldark, and a Lithuanian river became a Renaissance-era Thames for Helen Mirren's Elizabeth I.

Costume dramas spawned an army of dashing heroes in uniform, but not all fought with the aplomb of Sean Bean's Sharpe or Ioan Gruffudd's Horatio Hornblower. The Monocled Mutineer opened a controversial chapter of World War I and A Piece of Cake's flying stunts rewrote the Battle of Britain.