The GOLDEN age

Hold on to your bonnets as eight lavish dramas are set to take us back in time over the coming months...

-  JUDY EWENS, REBECCA MAHONE

RETURNING 

1 BRIDGERTON

NETFLIX The hit Regency drama returns with a love story that's been years in the making. Series 3 follows the changing relationship between long-time friends Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) and Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton, pictured with Nicola).

However, the course of true love never did run smooth and, after casually dismissing a romance with Penelope in the Series 2 finale, Colin must vie with a string of rival suitors, including dashing newcomer Lord Debling (The Crown's Sam Phillips).

With her secret identity as the gossipsheet author Lady Whistledown also now discovered by her best friend, Eloise Bridgerton (Claudia Jessie), Penelope is in for a busy season on the ton!

'I'm biased, but this is my favourite season so far,' says Derry Girls and Big Mood star Nicola, 37. 'It's really funny, really romantic, and has a lot of romcom elements.'

NEW

2 MISS AUSTEN BBC1

A literary mystery - why Jane Austen's sister Cassandra destroyed many of the novelist's letters - is reimagined in this four-part drama. In 1830, 13 years after Jane's death, Cassandra, played by Keeley Hawes, goes to see her young friend Isabella (Rose Leslie), seemingly to help her as she is about to lose her home. But Cassandra's real motive is to find a stash of letters that, in the wrong hands, could destroy Jane's reputation.