Clayhanger is a British television drama based on Arnold Bennett's novel series of the same name, published between 1910 and 1918, dramatised by Douglas Livingstone for ITV. Produced by Associated Television, the 26-episode programme is a coming-of-age story set in 19th century England. Edwin Clayhanger aspires to be an architect but is expected to join his father's printing business. His personal growth, eventual acceptance of the family business, and his romantic entanglement with Hilda Lessways are explored. Clayhanger was ITV's longest-ever drama at the time. While some found the pacing slow, it was nonetheless praised for its faithful adaptation, excellent acting, and atmospheric sets.
Tap a face for their filmography
Season 1
26 episodes · 1976
2008
Set in the small hamlet of Lark Rise and the wealthier neighbouring market town, Candleford, the series chronicles the daily lives of farm-workers, craftsmen and gentry at the end of the 19th Century. Lark Rise to Candleford is a love letter to a vanished corner of rural England and a heart-warming drama series teeming with wit, wisdom and romance.
Open details →
1995
Set in England in the early 19th century, Pride and Prejudice tells the story of Mr and Mrs Bennet's five unmarried daughters after the rich and eligible Mr Bingley and his status-conscious friend, Mr Darcy, have moved into their neighbourhood. While Bingley takes an immediate liking to the eldest Bennet daughter, Jane, Darcy has difficulty adapting to local society and repeatedly clashes with the second-eldest Bennet daughter, Elizabeth.
Open details →
2007
A rich and comic drama about the people of Cranford, a small Cheshire town on the cusp of change in the 1840s. Adapted from the novels by Elizabeth Gaskell.
Open details →
2008
Sense and Sensibility is a 2008 British television drama, based on Jane Austen's 1811 novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Andrew Davies, who said that the aim of the series was to make viewers forget Ang Lee's 1995 film version. As such, this series was more overtly sexual than previous Austen adaptations, and Davies included scenes featuring a seduction and a duel that are suggested in Austen's novel but absent from the feature film. A story of two sisters attempting to find happiness in the tightly structured society of 18th century England. Elinor, disciplined, restrained and very conscious of the manners of the day, represents sense. Outspoken, impetuous, emotional Marianne represents sensibility.
Open details →
2008
Amy Dorrit spends her days earning money for the family and looking after her proud father who is a long term inmate of Marshalsea debtors' prison in London. Amy and her family's world is transformed when her employer's son, Arthur Clennam, returns from overseas to solve his family's mysterious legacy and discovers that their lives are interlinked.
Open details →
2012
An intoxicating love story set in England's first department store in the 1870s. The Paradise revolves around the lives of the people who live and work in the store, each bound in their own way by the power of the world they live in, and the pasts that follow them there. A love story, mystery, and social comedy all in one.
Open details →
1994
Scarlett is a 1994 American television miniseries loosely based on Alexandra Ripley's eponymous 1991 book of the same name, a sequel to Margaret Mitchell's 'Gone with the Wind' (1936). Filmed across the United States and abroad, the series stars Joanne Whalley and Timothy Dalton. The miniseries was broadcast in four parts on CBS from November 13-17, 1994. Following the death of her sister-in-law Melanie Wilkes, Scarlett O'Hara sets out to reclaim her doomed romance with Rhett Butler, as it takes her home to Tara to Charleston to Savannah to Ireland, where she learns of her family's roots.
Open details →
2017
A coming-of-age story about an outsider who, against all odds and numerous challenges, fights for love and acceptance and for her place in the world. The series centers on a young orphaned girl in the late 1890s, who, after an abusive childhood spent in orphanages and the homes of strangers, is mistakenly sent to live with an elderly woman and her aging brother. Over time, 13-year-old Anne will transform their lives and eventually the small town in which they live with her unique spirit, fierce intellect and brilliant imagination.
Open details →
2025
Chronicles the lives of four generations of an upper-class family of stockbrokers, set against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving late-Victorian world.
Open details →
2015
Dickensian intertwines the realm of fictional characters in Charles Dickens’ novels—including Scrooge, Fagin and Miss Havisham—in half-hour episodes, as their lives intertwine in 19th century London. The Old Curiosity Shop sits next door to The Three Cripples Pub, while Fagin’s Den is hidden down a murky alley off a bustling Victorian street.
Open details →
2008
The story of Tess Durbeyfield, a low-born country girl whose family find they have noble connections.
Open details →
2016
The story of Queen Victoria, who came to the throne at a time of great economic turbulence and resurgent republicanism – and died 64 years later the head of the largest empire the world had ever seen, having revitalised the throne’s public image and become “grandmother of Europe”.
Open details →
2010
The trials and tribulations of the very large, colorful and imperfect Braverman family.
Open details →
2010
An exuberant drama set in Melbourne's Fitzroy, centering on Nina Proudman and her struggle to deal with her fabulously messy family, her hunt for a decent love life and her tendency to overthink and fly off into fantasy.
Open details →
2006
The close-knit Walker family deals with struggles and triumphs.
Open details →
2013
The Village is a BBC television drama created and written by Peter Moffat. Consisting of two six-episode series—the project intended as a 42-hour televised epic—the first series covers 1914 to 1920; the second continued the story into the 1920s. However, it was not commissioned for a third series. An epic drama charting the turbulent times experienced by one English village throughout the 20th century; births, deaths, political events and rebellions are among the events that occur during the time. Bert Middleton lives across the entire 100-year period, and his story from boyhood to old age forms the crux of the story, seen via flashbacks as Bert is interviewed in the present day by a documentarian working on a project about the second eldest man in the United Kingdom and his village.
Open details →
2015
Britain is in the grip of a chilling recession... falling wages, rising prices, civil unrest - only the bankers are smiling. It's 1783 and Ross Poldark returns from the American War of Independence to his beloved Cornwall to find his world in ruins: his father dead, the family mine long since closed, his house wrecked and his sweetheart pledged to marry his cousin. But Ross finds that hope and love can be found when you are least expecting it in the wild but beautiful Cornish landscape.
Open details →
2002
The Forsyte Saga is a British-American drama television serial based on John Galsworthy's novel series of the same name. Taking place from the 1870s to the 1920s, three generations of the upper-middle-class Forsyte family are explored.
Open details →
2006
Charlotte Bronte's classic about an orphan girl who grows up to become a governess in a gloomy manor in Yorkshire, where she falls in love with the mysterious Edward Rochester.
Open details →
2026
England, 1925. At a lavish country house party, a practical joke appears to have gone horribly, murderously wrong. It will be up to the unlikeliest of sleuths—the fizzingly inquisitive Lady Eileen 'Bundle' Brent—to unravel a chilling plot that will change her life, cracking wide open the country house mystery.
Open details →