Sumptuous costume dramas can provide a much-needed escape in troubling times, but if you’re tired of the usual assortment of airless parlors, manicured lawns, and straight-laced suitors, there is an alternative: a subset of recent films and series that play with our expectations of the genre. Combining post-punk soundtracks with cross-dressing, lobster racing, color-blind casting, and illicit love affairs, they allow us to view history through a new lens and feel surprisingly modern as a result. See our favorites below.
Sense and Sensibility (2026)
Photo: ©Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection
For those already familiar with Ang Lee’s exquisite take on the same novel, you’ll likely already be thinking about this rain-soaked, heart-rending 1995 adaptation as you watch the latest retelling – you’ll picture Kate Winslet as Marianne Dashwood, anguished at the rejection of Greg Wise’s Willoughby, as Esmé Creed-Miles and Frank Dillane act out the same scene; or Emma Thompson as the older sister, Elinor, unable to express her true feelings to Hugh Grant’s Edward Ferrars, as Edgar-Jones and George MacKay take centre stage. If you, for some reason, haven’t seen it, though, I urge you to correct that right away. The supporting cast is ridiculously stacked – Harriet Walter as the horrible Fanny Dashwood, Hugh Laurie as the disinterested Mr Palmer, Alan Rickman as the brooding Colonel Brandon – and the script so sparkling that it earned Thompson a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. It’s less earthy and elemental than the new Sense and Sensibility, to be sure, but remains an unassailable classic in its own right.
