1. Cranford - £19.99
For most of the winter, this delightful, confection, which centres on the women of a small Cheshire town on the brink of great change, made the prospect of Monday mornings easier to bear. Judi Dench and Francesca Annis star.
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2. City of Vice - £24.99
A refreshing antidote to the chocolate-box confections that litter Sunday evening schedules, this drama stars Ian McDiarmid and Iain Glen as magistrate brothers whose pre-Peel police force investigates goings on in the seedy under-belly of the capital.
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3. The Forsyte Saga - £69.99
Despite colour pictures and a big budget, the recent remake starring Damian Lewis and Gina McKee as the titular toffs wasn’t a patch on this original, which had millions transfixed in the late 1960s with its tale of upper class intrigue and bed swapping.
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4. Pride & Prejudice - £19.99
The adaptation that dropped a Colin Firth-shaped sex bomb on a legion of adoring female fans has lost none of its impact since it hit our screens, charting Elizabeth Bennet’s romantic travails and the strictures of class in 19th Century England.
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5. Bleak House - £29.99
This unqualified hit cemented the Beeb’s peerless status in the period drama stakes. A devilish turn by Charles Dance and Gillian Anderson’s icy stare hold together Dickens’s cracking plot about corruption, love, and social injustice.
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6. Fanny Hill - £15.99
Newcomer Rebecca Night stars as the virginal country lass forced into prostitution in this raunchy Andrew Davies adaptation of the scandalous 1748 John Cleland novel about lust and lace in Edwardian England.
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7. The Long Firm - £19.99
Period dramas aren’t always about corsets and crinolines. Mark Strong’s chilling tour de force as Harry Starks, a gay 1960s East End gangster who radiates menace, makes this adaptation of the Jake Arnott novel a grown up work of must-see drama.
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8. Sharpe - £99.99
These 14, feature-length TV films were a hit for ITV in the 1990s, and launched the career of Sean Bean, the eponymous soldier whose rescue of a senior general makes him a hero of the Napoleonic Wars with the French.
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9. North & South - £19.99
EastEnders and My Family star Daniela Denby-Ashe stars as southern girl Margaret Hale, who sides with striking cotton mill workers when she moves north, but develops a fondness for Richard Armitage’s brooding factory boss, John Thornton.
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10. Sense & Sensibility - £19.99
David Morrissey is perfectly cast as the brooding gent, Colonel Brandon, in this sumptuous Andrew Davies working of the classic Jane Austen tale of class and unrequited love. Some say it’s even better than the Ang Lee film version.
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31 March 2008, Chosen by Simon Usborne
