Someone I know really enjoyed North & South, has watched a half dozen version of Jane Eyre, enjoyed Pride & Prejudice (which is pre-victorian but still, 19th century England).
Any other films or TV series (preferably if they are on netflix) she could watch? I recommended Bleak House and Wives & Daughters. I haven’t seen them, but they seems similar.
There are plenty of Jane Austen adaptations, but personally I’d recommend the '90s film version of Emma starring Gwyneth Paltrow. It’s really more a romantic comedy than a drama, but it has all the gowns, carriages, etc., one would expect.
Here’s a list of period dramas set in the Victorian era.
I also highly recommend The Young Victoria, which is about the young Queen’s early reign and romance with Prince Albert.
There’s masses, but one that sticks out in my memory is Middlemarch (by George Eliot), a BBC 6 part drama that is about 20 years old now, and is set around the 1830/40s.
Also, the Forsyte Saga (stars Damien Lewis as a baddie).
Are we using “romantic” in the [del]“boy meets girl”[/del] “gentleman conceives admiration for lady” sense, or in some other, more philosophical/artistic/sociopolitical Rousseauvian or Byronic or Wagnerian or Nietzschean or Romanticism Versus Enlightenment sense?
It’s set in the late 18th century, but Poldark held the UK gripped when it was broadcast.
And not a few Americans! I watched that and was so enthralled that I read the books, too, there were several. Fascinating!
There have been some great recent-ish adaptations of Dickens’ novels – I’m partial to the 1998 Our Mutual Friend with Keeley Hawes and Paul McGann, the 2008 Little Dorrit with Matthew MacFadyen, and the epic 2005 Bleak House, with too many amazing actors to list – not to be missed.
Oh, and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wive and Daughters is available on Netflix streaming, so get on that. 