Items21The creator’s order
  1. 1Plebs (2013)Plebs (2013) 7.8/10 on IMDbFirst aired Mar 25, 2013Ancient Rome as a roommate comedy. Marcus, Stylax and their slave Grumio are new arrivals from the provinces trying to get ahead in the big city, and the show's whole trick is having them talk like modern guys about dates, bosses and rent while surrounded by togas and amphorae. It ran for five…0
  2. 2Up Pompeii! (1969)Up Pompeii! (1969) 7.6/10 on IMDbFirst aired Sep 17, 1969The grandfather of the Roman sitcom. Frankie Howerd plays Lurcio, a slave in pre-eruption Pompeii, and every episode opens with him trying to deliver a prologue to the audience, only for it to be interrupted, usually by the doom-laden warnings of the prophetess Senna. Talbot Rothwell, who wrote…0
  3. 3Norsemen (2016)Norsemen (2016) 7.7/10 on IMDbFirst aired Oct 21, 2016Vikings with HR problems. Set in the village of Norheim around the year 790, this Norwegian comedy treats raiding, slavery, political rivalry and blood feuds with the deadpan of an office sitcom, as new ideas keep upending village life. The makers filmed every scene twice, once in Norwegian and…0
  4. 4Maid Marian and Her Merry Men (1989)Maid Marian and Her Merry Men (1989) 7.8/10 on IMDbFirst aired Nov 16, 1989Robin Hood, flipped. Tony Robinson, Baldrick himself, created and wrote this BBC series and plays the tax-obsessed Sheriff of Nottingham, while Marian leads the outlaw gang and Robin is a vain, incompetent ex-tailor who fell into the leader's job by accident. It was made for children and won the…0
  5. 5The Decameron (2024)The Decameron (2024) 6.5/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jul 25, 2024A plague comedy, and a surprisingly sharp one. In 1348, as the Black Death sweeps Florence, a group of nobles and their servants hole up at a countryside villa, and the class lines start to buckle the moment the food and the pecking order are in doubt. Kathleen Jordan loosely drew on Boccaccio's…0
  6. 6Blackadder (1983)Blackadder (1983) 8.0/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jun 15, 1983The essential one. Each series drops a new Edmund Blackadder into a different century: 1485 at the end of the Middle Ages, Elizabeth I's court, the Regency, and finally the trenches of 1917. Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis wrote the first series, and it is the weakest; Ben Elton replaced…0
  7. 7Upstart Crow (2016)Upstart Crow (2016) 7.7/10 on IMDbFirst aired May 9, 2016Shakespeare as a put-upon writer with a commute. Ben Elton's BBC Two sitcom casts David Mitchell as the Bard from 1592 onwards, shuttling between London theaters and his family in Stratford, and moaning about coach journeys exactly the way people moan about motorways and railways today. Every…0
  8. 8Our Flag Means Death (2022)Our Flag Means Death (2022) 7.7/10 on IMDbFirst aired Mar 3, 2022A gentleman's midlife crisis in the Golden Age of Piracy. In 1717, Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) swaps his comfortable life for a pirate ship he has no idea how to run, struggles to earn his crew's respect, and soon crosses paths with Blackbeard (Taika Waititi). What starts as a silly…0
  9. 9The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin (2024)The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin (2024) 7.0/10 on IMDbFirst aired Mar 1, 2024The title is a promise, and the show keeps it. Noel Fielding plays the real highwayman Dick Turpin, recast as the reluctant leader of a band of outlaws who must keep outwitting a thoroughly corrupt lawman, Jonathan Wilde. History here is a dressing-up box: tricorn hats, coaching inns and gallows,…0
  10. 10The Great (2020)The Great (2020) 8.1/10 on IMDbFirst aired May 15, 2020It says so on screen: The Great: An Occasionally True Story. Tony McNamara takes 18th-century Russia and Catherine's rise from nobody to empress, then cheerfully ignores whatever gets in the way of a good line, which is why Hulu billed it as anti-historical. Elle Fanning's Catherine is an idealist…0