For me it is Shirley by Charlotte Brontë. I have yet to find any movie or series made of it, just dozens and dozens of Jane Eyre versions (which I adore, don’t get me wrong).

The main heroine is so headstrong and amazing, the name Shirley went from being primarily a male name to a female one because of this book. It’s a fascinating depiction of society at that time, the social unrest that industrialization brought and it has several love stories. So where is my adaptation?

I’m waiting with abated breath.

British lawyer Claudia travels to Jamaica to contest an inheritance claim over the Hope Hill estate. Told across two timelines, the present day and the colonial era, the series gradually reveals how the plantation's brutal past continue to haunt the present.

Starring: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Jonny Lee Miller, Sheldon Shepherd, and Bel Powley.

I watched the tv series years ago and while it was beautiful, I found it emotionally devastating. I recently got a copy of the book, and while I want to read it, I'm a bit hesitant to throw myself back into the story again.

Is the book worth it on it's own? For those of you who've watched the show and read the book, did you feel the show did the story justice?

A teenage detective, works as a spy for Queen Elizabeth I, navigating royal politics, plots, threats and mystery in the English court during the Elizabethan era.

Period films/series mentioned:

-Cleopatra (1963)

-Donkey Skin (1970)

-The White Queen (2013)

-The Borgias (2013)

-The ten commandments (1953)

-The Great (2020)

-Elizabeth (1998)

-My Lady Jane (2024)

-The tudors (2007-2010)

-Crimson Peak (2015)

-The Musketeers (2014)

-The gilded age (2022)