If Downton Abbey ruined you for modern TV: 14 period drama box sets for winter lockdown binges

If Downton Abbey left you perpetually dissatisfied with modern television's lack of sweeping staircases and repressed longing, you're not alone. There's something about period drama DVD box sets like Downton Abbey that transforms a winter weekend in the Blue Mountains from "cabin rental" into "immersive historical retreat." The physical ritual matters here—slotting a disc into the player, watching bonus features on set design, actually owning these stories instead of surrendering to algorithmic whims.

The Verdict: These fourteen box sets prove that the best period dramas understand history isn't just fancy frocks and drawing rooms—it's where human desire collides with social constraint, where landscapes hold secrets, and where every corset lacing carries political weight.

Downton Abbey: The Movie (DVD) — Universal

Quick Verdict: The theatrical epilogue that proves you can go home again, especially when home involves Maggie Smith delivering withering one-liners in a tiara.

This isn't just fan service—it's a masterclass in transitioning beloved television to cinema without losing the intimate character work that made the series compulsive viewing. The Crawleys prepare for a royal visit, which naturally means both upstairs and downstairs lose their collective minds in the most British way possible. What makes this DVD essential is watching how the big-screen budget enhances rather than overwhelms: the sweeping Yorkshire landscapes finally get their due, but it's still fundamentally about Mary's eyebrow raises and Carson's standards. The physical disc includes deleted scenes that add crucial texture to subplots the theatrical cut compressed.

Explore our current copy of Downton Abbey: The Movie

Lark Rise to Candleford: Season 1 (DVD) — BBC

Quick Verdict: The gentler, earthier alternative to Downton—where class tensions simmer in post offices rather than grand estates, and community drama is just as compelling as aristocratic scheming.

Flora Thompson's semi-autobiographical novels become something genuinely radical here: a period drama where working people aren't just scenery. Young Laura Timmins moves from hamlet to market town, and the series mines genuine emotional complexity from postal service politics, harvest struggles, and the fragile dignity of rural poverty. The BBC's adaptation understands that "cosy" doesn't mean "inconsequential"—these episodes tackle illegitimacy, class resentment, and economic precarity while maintaining a visual warmth that feels like drinking tea in good light. Season 1 establishes the rhythms beautifully, introducing Dorcas Lane's post office as a hub where every letter carries someone's hope or heartbreak.

Explore our current copy of Lark Rise to Candleford: Season 1

Lark Rise to Candleford: Season 2 (DVD) — Roadshow

Quick Verdict: The second season deepens the stakes without losing the series' essential warmth—new arrivals shake up both communities, and the show continues refusing to patronize its characters.

What's remarkable about continuing with Season 2 is how the writers resist formula. The arrival of new residents creates genuine friction rather than sitcom-style misunderstandings. The period detail remains impeccable—you can practically smell the bread baking and feel the weight of Laura's postbag—but it's the emotional honesty that elevates this beyond Sunday-night comfort viewing. Characters make genuinely poor decisions, harbour resentments, struggle with their own limitations. It's Downton without the safety net of aristocratic distance, which makes every small triumph feel earned.

Explore our current copy of Lark Rise to Candleford: Season 2

Lark Rise to Candleford: Season 3 (DVD) — Roadshow

Quick Verdict: The third season proves the series has staying power beyond initial charm—the character arcs mature, the social commentary sharpens, and Flora Thompson's vision reaches full realization.

By Season 3, Lark Rise has earned the right to tackle weightier material. The Victorian setting becomes more than backdrop—it's a lens for examining how communities fracture and reform, how progress arrives unevenly, how individual dreams collide with collective needs. The apprenticeship storyline that began in Season 1 pays off beautifully here, and the ensemble cast (always the series' secret weapon) gets showcase moments that reveal new depths. This is the season where the show fully commits to being genuinely radical television disguised as gentle costume drama.

Explore our current copy of Lark Rise to Candleford: Season 3

Call the Midwife: Season 1 (DVD) — BBC

Quick Verdict: Jennifer Worth's memoirs become televisual gold—a period drama where medical realism meets emotional devastation, all set in London's East End when childbirth was genuinely perilous.

If you think period dramas can't handle gritty subject matter, Call the Midwife will disabuse you of that notion within fifteen minutes. Set in 1950s Poplar, this follows Anglican nuns and lay midwives navigating poverty, maternal mortality, and the slow arrival of the NHS. What makes Season 1 essential viewing is its refusal to romanticize: these births are messy, dangerous, and profoundly moving. The show balances medical drama with character work—Jessica Raine's Jenny Lee narrates with the wisdom of hindsight, but lives through each crisis with raw uncertainty. The physical DVD preserves the period detail beautifully; you need the image quality to appreciate the production design's commitment to authentic squalor and dignity coexisting.

Explore our current copy of Call the Midwife: Season 1

Doctor Thorne (DVD) — Universal

Quick Verdict: Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire Chronicles get sumptuous BBC treatment—it's Downton-adjacent comfort viewing with sharper social satire and Tom Hollander being magnificently principled.

Julian Fellowes adapting Trollope feels almost too perfect—both understand that Victorian class anxiety is inherently dramatic, that money and marriage are never separate conversations, that provincial society can be as cutthroat as any London ballroom. Tom Hollander's Doctor Thorne is a country physician with impossible integrity, raising his niece Mary while navigating the debt-ridden Gresham estate next door. What makes this DVD a worthy addition to any Downton lover's collection is how it handles similar themes—inheritance, propriety, love across class lines—with Trollope's particular brand of gentle irony. The production values are impeccable, and Fellowes' screenplay captures the novelist's gift for making financial desperation genuinely compelling.

Explore our current copy of Doctor Thorne

The Secret River (DVD) — Roadshow

Quick Verdict: Kate Grenville's devastating novel becomes essential Australian period drama—a reckoning with colonial violence that refuses comfortable distance or easy redemption.

This is the antidote to romanticized period drama. Set along the Hawkesbury River in 1813, The Secret River follows William Thornhill, a convict granted land that's already home to the Dharug people. What unfolds is an epic tragedy about how "good men" commit atrocities, how desperation becomes justification, how frontier violence gets buried in family mythology. The Australian landscape isn't picturesque backdrop here—it's contested ground, every beautiful shot haunted by what's being erased. Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Sarah Snook deliver gutting performances, but the series' real achievement is refusing to let viewers off the hook. This is Australian history without the settler-colonial comfort blanket, preserved on DVD for those willing to sit with discomfort.

Explore our current copy of The Secret River

Beecham House (DVD) — Roadshow

Quick Verdict: Gurinder Chadha's 1790s Delhi drama brings Mughal India to period drama with sumptuous visuals, complex politics, and Tom Bateman's former soldier attempting impossible redemption.

Finally, a period drama set in India that isn't purely about British characters having feelings against exotic backdrops. John Beecham, ex-East India Company soldier, establishes a household in Delhi during a moment of historical transition—the Mughal Empire declining, British power rising, and Beecham himself trying to create something honourable amid imperial violence. What makes this DVD essential is Chadha's commitment to showing Indian characters with full agency and complexity, not supporting players in British stories. The production design is stunning—the house itself becomes a character, representing Beecham's impossible dream of cross-cultural harmony. It's imperfect television, occasionally overstuffed with plot, but it's attempting something genuinely new in the period drama landscape.

Explore our current copy of Beecham House

The Musketeers: Season 2 (DVD) — BBC

Quick Verdict: Alexandre Dumas gets the swashbuckling BBC treatment—it's period drama where the swords actually get used, political intrigue is genuinely Byzantine, and the bromance is chef's kiss.

If you've been craving period drama with more parkour and less parlour scenes, Season 2 of The Musketeers delivers. This isn't your grandmother's costume drama—it's Dumas' 17th-century Paris reimagined with modern pacing, diverse casting, and fight choreography that takes full advantage of the BBC's budget. The four musketeers (because D'Artagnan earns his place) navigate Richelieu's machinations, royal intrigue, and their own complicated loyalties. What elevates this beyond mere action-adventure is the character work: these aren't cardboard heroes but men wrestling with duty, friendship, and France's messy politics. Season 2 deepens the stakes beautifully, introducing new threats while maintaining the kinetic energy that made Season 1 compulsive viewing.

Explore our current copy of The Musketeers: Season 2

Copper: Season One (DVD) — BBC

Quick Verdict: Post-Civil War New York gets the gritty crime drama treatment—think Gangs of New York meets procedural television, where Irish immigrants navigate Five Points corruption and Detective Corcoran searches for his vanished daughter.

This is period drama for viewers who find drawing rooms insufficiently grimy. Tom Fontana (of Oz fame) brings his unflinching eye to 1860s Manhattan, following Detective Kevin Corcoran through a city divided between robber barons and desperate immigrants. The period detail is impeccable—the mud, the violence, the casual brutality of industrial-age urban life—but it's the moral complexity that makes Season 1 essential. Corcoran isn't a simple hero; he's complicit in systems he's also trying to reform. The show tackles racism, class warfare, and Reconstruction-era politics without modern preachiness. It's Downton Abbey's opposite in every way: dark where that's light, cynical where that's hopeful, but equally committed to using historical setting for serious drama.

Explore our current copy of Copper: Season One

Copper: Season 2 (DVD) — Patina Paperbacks

Quick Verdict: The second season doubles down on everything that made the first essential—darker crimes, higher stakes, and New York's underworld gets even more labyrinthine.

Season 2 of Copper benefits from the groundwork laid in Season 1: we know these characters now, which makes their compromises hit harder. Corcoran's investigation into his daughter's disappearance intensifies even as he's drawn deeper into Five Points' criminal networks. What's remarkable is how the show refuses easy resolutions—period dramas often use historical distance as moral insulation, but Copper insists on showing how good people become complicit, how survival requires ugly choices. The production design remains stunning in its commitment to authentic grime, and the ensemble cast (particularly Franka Potente as Eva) gets richer material to work with. This is the season that confirms the series as essential viewing for anyone who wants their period drama morally complicated.

Explore our current copy of Copper: Season 2

The Secret Agent (DVD) — Roadshow

Quick Verdict: Joseph Conrad's anarchist thriller becomes claustrophobic BBC drama—Victorian London's seedy underbelly, double agents, and Toby Jones being magnificently unsettling in three parts.

Conrad's 1907 novel gets adapted with appropriate darkness: this is period drama as psychological thriller, where fog-shrouded London hides bombers, informants, and Toby Jones' Verloc running a seedy shop as cover for espionage. What makes this DVD essential is how it translates Conrad's modernist unease into visual language—the period setting isn't nostalgic, it's oppressive. The three-part structure allows for proper psychological development; this isn't action-thriller pacing but slow-building dread. Vicky McClure as Verloc's wife Winnie delivers a devastating performance, and the adaptation understands that Conrad's real subject isn't anarchist plots but human isolation and failed communication. It's period drama for viewers who find Downton too emotionally straightforward.

Explore our current copy of The Secret Agent

SS-GB [2 Disc] (DVD) — Universal

Quick Verdict: Len Deighton's alternate history nightmare becomes chilling BBC drama—1941 London under Nazi occupation, where Scotland Yard detectives navigate impossible loyalties and moral compromise feels inevitable.

Alternative history done right uses the "what if" premise to illuminate actual history rather than escape it. SS-GB imagines Britain after losing the Battle of Britain: swastikas over Buckingham Palace, German soldiers in Piccadilly, and Detective Douglas Archer (Sam Riley) investigating murder under SS oversight. The two-disc set preserves the miniseries' slow-burn tension beautifully—this isn't action-packed resistance fantasy but thoughtful exploration of collaboration, resistance, and the moral mathematics of survival under occupation. The production design is genuinely unsettling; familiar London landmarks rendered alien by occupation transforms period drama into speculative horror. It's essential viewing for understanding how quickly "normal" can become complicity.

Explore our current copy of SS-GB

The Chronicles of Downton Abbey (Hardcover) — Fellowes, Jessica and Sturgis, Matthew

Quick Verdict: Not a DVD but the essential companion—this hardcover guide transforms casual viewing into deep appreciation, with behind-the-scenes insights, character histories, and production details that enrich every rewatch.

After you've binged the box sets, this beautifully produced companion book becomes the next step in full Downton immersion. Jessica Fellowes and Matthew Sturgis compiled what amounts to the definitive guide: character backstories, historical context for plot points, costume design evolution, and those delicious details about how Highclere Castle's actual history influenced fictional storylines.