Historical fiction

[Bruisername]

So DS enjoys historical stuff like The Last Kingdom and we’re just finishing Cadfael. Needs to have a bit of intrigue to it but nothing romantic!!

any suggestions? Plus points for a good historical detective drama that hasn’t tried to pull in modern sensibilities too much!!

Shardlake!

The new one? We watched the first episode but it felt off somehow. Maybe we’ll give it another go

Merlin?

I came on to say Shardlake too. There’s only one. It’s on Disney+, I think.

Shardlake is too young (and not as dour as in the books), Barack was supposed to be very easy on the eye, and if you know the books well it’s irritating when things are changes about to move on the narrative, soundtrack is irritating… as someone said above ‘off’.

Foyle's War, Poirot, Bletchley Circle, Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Name of the Rose, Ellery Queen, Inspector Alleyn, Campion, Young Sherlock Holmes, Sally Lockhart Mysteries, Enola Holmes

Barack wasn’t even in the novel Dissolution, but I found him very easy on the eye in the TV adaptation. I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I know - it clocked after about twenty minutes that, hang on, it was a young fella from his father’s estate that went along with him and Barak wasn’t even in that book! And Guy isn’t black - in the books he is described as having very dark skin, in one description of it looking like burned wood! And Joan was old wasn’t she (not a pretty young woman)?

I hate it when they mix up storylines in books (when you know them reasonably well) as things don’t quite make sense! And Shardlake is a dour, miserable git with no sense of humour on the books, and his hand wasn’t deformed either...

Pillars of the Earth - there is a bit of a romantic element to the story but it's not dominant.

The Phillipa Gregory books. Also The Tudors(yes things get messed up, but its very easy to watch) Sharpe(bugger!) Master and Commander.

Hornblower? I watched it when it was first on, so not sure how it holds up now, but think it would fit the bill. Definitely Sharpe too, as Bernard Cornwell wrote both Sharpe and the Last Kingdom.

I haven't watched it yet, but the King and Conquerer series is now all on iplayer, about the Norman conquest.

Sharpe