Austenian high jinks, internet boyfriends in crisp tailoring, a royal romp featuring the daughter of two cinematic icons – the buzziest period dramas heading to big and small screens in 2025 have all of the essential ingredients of a transportive hit: an assortment of beautiful actors, stunning locations, exquisitely detailed costumes and a generous dose of escapism. These are the six not to miss over the next 12 months.
Read more: 2025 SAG Awards Red Carpet
Miss Austen
Ahead of the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth later this year, there will be a flurry of celebrations up and down the country, and many more fans will surely delve deeper into the life of the prolific novelist. Perfectly timed, then, is this Andrea Gibb-penned, Aisling Walsh-directed limited series, based on Gill Hornby’s historical fiction book of the same name, which offers one explanation for one of the Austenverse’s most enduring mysteries: why did Jane’s beloved sister, Cassandra, burn so much of their correspondence after the former’s death? Casting the formidable Keeley Hawes as an older iteration of the latter, as she sets off to find and destroy said letters, it’s a delicate and moving examination of grief, regret, longing and heartbreak, as our heroine contemplates her future and looks back on her halcyon youth – one in which she’s played by the luminous Synnøve Karlsen, and runs riot with her vivacious and supremely talented sister (Patsy Ferran).
Streaming now on BBC iPlayer
A Thousand Blows
The terrifying head of an all-female gang (Erin Doherty) which wreaks havoc across Victorian London, a hulking heavyweight champion from the East End (Stephen Graham), two newly-arrived Jamaicans (Hezekiah Moscow and Alec Munroe) looking to make a splash – these are just some of the colourful characters who populate Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight’s latest true life-inspired crime saga. They collide at the capital’s underground bare-knuckle boxing rings, where fortunes are made, reputations destroyed, romances born and lives abruptly ended with a single blow. As the old world rages against the new, it makes for an explosive account of 19th-century life in the big smoke as you’ve never seen it before.
On Disney+ on 21 February
The Leopard
Supermodel-in-the-making Deva Cassel, the daughter of Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel, takes centre stage in this lavish, six-part, Italian-language retelling of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s 1958 classic, so memorably reimagined by Luchino Visconti in his Palme d’Or-winning epic starring Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale. This time around, Kim Rossi Stuart will fill Lancaster’s shoes as Don Fabrizio Corbèra, the Prince of Salina, who finds his life and that of his aristocratic family upended amidst the Italian revolution in 19th-century Sicily, while Cassel takes Cardinale’s part as the enchanting and wealthy Angelica Sedara, whose marriage to the latter’s nephew (Saul Nanni) could be their saving grace. Expect sumptuous ball gowns, glittering galas and secret trysts in sun-baked villas.
On Netflix on 5 March
Mr Burton
Industry’s Harry Lawtey brings his smouldering intensity to the part of a British icon in Marc Evans’s sweeping biopic: Welsh-born screen legend, seven-time Oscar nominee and twice husband to Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton. Honing in on his early years, during which a kindly schoolmaster (Toby Jones) and his wife (Lesley Manville) supported the unruly teenager’s lofty ambitions to become an actor, it follows him as he trades a modest life as a coal miner’s son for an Oxford education and a storied career on the stage in the ’40s and ’50s, swapping muddy rugby kits and frayed jackets for sharply cut suits in the process. As a portrait of one of our most famous Hollywood exports, who nevertheless remained swathed in mystery, it’s sure to be fascinating.
In cinemas on 4 April
Downton Abbey 3
After six glorious seasons and two highly nostalgic big-screen outings, the Crawleys (Elizabeth McGovern, Hugh Bonneville, Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael, Penelope Wilton et al) are, thankfully, coming back for yet another round of grand dinners, swoon-worthy romances and barbed social commentary. Joining them will be their trusted employees (Jim Carter, Phyllis Logan, Joanne Froggatt), a handful of returning favourites (Paul Giamatti as the visiting American, Dominic West as a mustachioed pin-up) and some fresh faces (Joely Richardson, Alessandro Nivola, Simon Russell Beale), to make up for the gaping hole left by the late Maggie Smith’s razor-sharp Dowager Countess. Still, in the hands of franchise creator Julian Fellowes, set against the backdrop of the magnificent Yorkshire pile, and with the intricate costuming and enchanting music we’ve come to expect from this rarefied world, it’ll be impossible to resist.
In cinemas on 12 September
Marty Supreme
You’ve surely seen the paparazzi shots of Timothée Chalamet in his oversized suits, steel-rimmed glasses and little moustache passionately kissing an opera-robe-and-elbow-length-gloves-clad Gwyneth Paltrow, but if you’ve yet to add Josh Safdie’s off-the-wall period piece to your watchlist, you should do so now. Loosely inspired by the life of pro ping pong player Marty Reisman, who came to prominence as a Lower East Side hustler in the ’40s, competing for bets and prizes, and somehow went onto become the US men’s singles table tennis champion, it should be a heart-pumping, twisty origin story that will, no doubt, inspire another themed, method dressing-filled press tour for the two-time Oscar nominee at its centre. I can hardly wait.
In cinemas on 25 December
