If you haven’t heard, “Bridgerton” Season 4, Part 2 dropped on Netflix on Feb. 26—and the ton is officially back with fresh gossip. Whether you’ve already binged all eight episodes or you’re looking for something to hold you over until Season 5, now is the perfect time to explore Netflix’s deep catalog of period dramas.

But first: what even is a period drama? A period piece is any film or TV show set in a historical era clearly distinct from the present day—think corseted gowns, candlelit castles and horse-drawn carriages instead of smartphones and Ubers.

The best ones don’t just dress the part; they pull you into a world so different from your own that two hours feel like a time machine.

After logging more streaming hours than I’d like to admit, here are my top five picks on Netflix.

5. “Mr. Queen”

When a modern-day Blue House chef named Jang Bong-hwan is mysteriously transported into the body of Queen Cheorin—wife of Korea’s King Cheoljong in 1851—chaos ensues for the entire royal court. Set in the Joseon Dynasty, this South Korean series is the definition of last-but-not-least.

The comedy here is genuinely unhinged in the best possible way. In one unforgettable scene, the queen—now possessed by a man who has exactly zero interest in royal decorum—holds her own head underwater while an army of ladies-in-waiting scrambles to pull her up by her feet.

The physical comedy alone is worth the watch.

Shin Hye-sun’s performance is a tour de force: she has to sell both the dignity of a queen and the bewildered panic of a man trapped in the wrong body and century, sometimes within the same sentence. Kim Jung-hyun, meanwhile, plays the king with a quiet intensity that slowly reveals surprising depth.

That said, if you are here strictly for the romance, temper your expectations going in.

The love story, as untraditional as it is, develops slowly—it’s more of a slow burn buried underneath palace politics and slapstick—which is why this one lands at No. 5 despite being genuinely excellent.

At 20 episodes of over an hour each, it is a real commitment, but one that pays off in the final stretch.

4. “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story”

Before she was the formidable, sharp-tongued queen presiding over the ton in “Bridgerton,” Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a young woman from Northern Germany who had no idea she was about to be married to the king of England.

This six-episode limited series—written and created by Shonda Rhimes—follows that love story from its chaotic, arranged-marriage beginning through its complicated, tender middle.

What makes this show genuinely compelling is its dual timeline structure.

One episode drops viewers into a young Charlotte’s world; by the middle of the next, the story has shifted to the older queen audiences already know from “Bridgerton,” and back again. That constant juxtaposition forces viewers to keep asking the same question: how did this hopeful, headstrong young woman become the guarded monarch she is today?

The answer, once it becomes clear, hits harder than expected.

Amarteifio and Mylchreest have remarkable chemistry, and Mylchreest’s portrayal of King George III’s mental illness is handled with a sensitivity that elevates the series beyond a simple romance.

It earned a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes—and it deserves it.

My one honest critique is baked into the story itself: Charlotte is consistently forced to choose between her identities as queen, wife and mother, always sacrificing one role for another. As a viewer, it is frustrating to watch—though, to be fair, that frustration is exactly the point. The show asks you to feel the weight of the impossible position Charlotte was placed in. That is smart storytelling. It just does not make it any less painful to watch.

3. “Enola Holmes” / “Enola Holmes 2”

Her last name is instantly recognizable—because she IS the younger sister of the famous Sherlock Holmes.

Set in Victorian England in the early 1880s, these two films follow Enola (played with infectious energy by Millie Bobby Brown of “Stranger Things”) as she searches for her missing mother in the first film, then takes on her first official detective case in the second.

Brown carries both films almost entirely on her own charisma, and she is more than capable.

The fourth-wall breaks—where Enola turns to the camera mid-chase to update the audience on her thinking—are charming and funny, giving the films a personality that most period pieces lack.

The production design is stunning: grimy London streets and grand country estates look equally lived-in and believable.

Henry Cavill plays a surprisingly warm, fallible Sherlock, which is a refreshing update on the character.

Here is my issue, though. Enola is brilliant, resourceful and fully capable of handling herself—the films tell us this constantly.

But they also can’t stop cutting back to Sherlock and Mycroft, her brothers, who exist largely to underscore how much Enola still needs to “learn” about the world.

In the first film especially, Mycroft (Sam Claflin) is so relentlessly condescending that every scene with him undercuts the point the movie is trying to make. If Enola is the hero of the story, trust her to be the hero of the story.

The format question also nags at me: two-hour movies are fine, but with three films now in development—“Enola Holmes 3” was announced in late 2024 with a third installment in the works—it starts to feel like this story would breathe better as a series.

Still, both films are genuinely fun, and the sequel sharpens the formula considerably.

Fans of Sherlock Holmes mysteries and Agatha Christie will eat this up.

2. “Bridgerton”

By now, you have almost certainly heard of “Bridgerton.”

If you haven’t: the Bridgerton family in Regency-era London—specifically 1813 and onward—has eight children, all young and unmarried.

Each season follows one sibling through the treacherous social rituals of “the ton,” the elite society that controls who marries whom and why.

Season 1 centers on eldest daughter Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor); Season 2 follows eldest son Anthony (Jonathan Bailey); Season 3 covers third-borrn Colin (Luke Newton); and the newly completed Season 4—both parts now streaming—tells the Cinderella-inspired story of second son Benedict (Luke Thompson) and Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha), a resourceful maid hiding a secret identity.

The show is based on Julia Quinn’s bestselling eight-novel book series, with each season adapting a different book, with the most recent season drawing from the third novel, “An Offer from a Gentleman.”

The production is genuinely stunning—ballroom scenes shimmer, the costumes are extraordinary, and the ensemble cast is magnetic.

But “Bridgerton” is not a history class, and it knows it.

The show is famous for its anachronisms: pop songs performed as string quartet arrangements, fashion choices that owe more to fantasy than fact, and—a personal point of contention for me—sleep masks, which a quick Google search reveals weren’t commercially patented until 1930.

For some viewers, that creative freedom is exactly the point.

For others, it pulls you out of the period entirely. Know going in which kind of viewer you are.

The show also earns its TV-MA rating, with several scenes that are explicit enough that I’d suggest it is best for viewers 16 and older.

If you loved “Pride and Prejudice” but want something a little more fun (or steamy), “Bridgerton” is your next stop.

1. “Bon Appétit, Your Majesty”

Chef Yeon Ji-yeong is a modern-day French-trained chef who wins a prestigious cooking competition—and then wakes up in the early Joseon Dynasty, face-to-face with the king of Korea (loosely inspired by the historical King Yeonsangun, who ruled from 1494 to 1506).

His Majesty is a tyrant with an exquisitely sensitive palate. Chef Yeon Ji-yeong is a woman from the future who has absolutely no patience for his dramatics.

What follows is one of the most genuinely delightful shows I have watched in years.

The central dynamic is irresistible.

When the king declares that the chef’s modern fusion food is “too spicy,” Ji-yeong—who knows he can’t actually punish her without losing his best cook—essentially tells him to stop being dramatic and eat his schnitzel.

Lee Chae-min plays the king with a perfectly calibrated mix of tyrannical severity and slowly-cracking-open vulnerability. YoonA, a veteran of K-pop group Girls’ Generation turned acclaimed actress, brings an energy to Ji-yeong that is impossible to look away from.

At 12 episodes of about 80 minutes each, the show is a genuinely binge-able commitment—I finished it in two days—but the runtime is mostly earned. Cooking scenes double as plot devices, political scheming is anchored in culinary metaphors, and every episode finds something new to do with the central will-they-won’t-they tension.

My one caveat: the final episodes lean heavily into palace coup politics and the darker corners of historical Joseon. If you are here for the slow-burn romance and the food trivia—and you absolutely should be—the tonal shift in the back half requires some patience. Push through it. The ending is worth it.

One last note: unlike most K-dramas on Netflix, “Bon Appétit” is available dubbed in English, which makes it one of the most accessible Korean-language period dramas on the platform for new viewers.

If you love K-dramas and cooking competition shows, this one scratches every itch.

These five are my personal favorites, but Netflix’s catalog of period pieces runs deep—and spans centuries and continents.

Whether you want Regency balls, Joseon palace kitchens or Victorian detective work, there has never been a better time to let Netflix be your time machine.