Love costume drama? You are spoilt for choice in 2019 and several costume dramas are a hot ticket in this awards season. Why do we like them? Well, we love history for a start but also, who can resist an array of gorgeous costumes and interiors? So many historic places are now appearing as film locations, it's a great chance to relive the films yourself (costume not obligatory).
There is lots to savour on the big screen. Attracting lots of attention, we have The Favourite, speculating about the true nature of Queen Anne’s relationship with her BFF, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. We have Keira Knightley in another set of stays as the French writer Colette, Mary, Queen of Scots visiting castles (no, she never met Elizabeth) and we have All is True with Kenneth Branagh seeking to bring a bit of truth to a middle-aged William Shakespeare.
Don’t neglect the small screen, there are plenty of treats in store for fans of a period setting. There’ll be more girl-on-girl smooching in Gentleman Jack, the BBC’s version of the life of Anne Lister of Shibden Hall, a great 19th century role model for women whatever their sexuality.
We should remember her as much for her independence, her skill as a mountaineer and her scholarship as for her sexual freedom in an age of repression (she was the first woman in Britain to forge what the partners themselves regarded as a lesbian marriage) but we'll have to wait and see what the BBC will be celebrating about her. HBO and Sky team up for Catherine the Great, starring Helen Mirren as the all-powerful Empress of Russia nearing the end of her reign and ITV have roped in Andrew Davies to adapt Jane Austen’s unfinished novel set in the fictitious seaside resort of Sanditon, to be aired towards the end of the year.
There are lots of returns too. New seasons of old favourites like Poldark, Peaky Blinders, Call the Midwife, Victoria, Taboo and The Crown will keep you on the sofa.
Will this mean a sudden upsurge of interest in the locations? After all, Dubrovnik is trying to limit the numbers of visitors to the Old City, a fair proportion of whom are on the Game of Thrones trail (final season due in April if you have been off-grid for the last few months). It makes a great day out to go on a movie trail to the real locations of your favourite moments of the year’s films. If this is your plan, it's good news for Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, film location for the majority of The Favourite, where the distinctive black and white floor of the Marble Hall is already familiar from Taboo as the headquarters of the East India Company.
The makers of the The Crown were at Hatfield too, but Victoria’s production team plumped for Yorkshire to recreate the grand interiors of several palaces, filmed at Harewood House, Newby Hall, Castle Howard and Wentworth Woodhouse while the art deco interiors of English Heritage's Eltham Palace make an impressive Royal Yacht Britannia (rather grander than the real thing, which you can also visit, moored off Leith). Gentleman Jack is filmed at the house that the heroine, Anne Lister, largely designed for herself, the real Shibden Hall in Yorkshire. And that is just as it should be.