Why Doesn’t Netflix Have its Own ‘Downton Abbey’?

Downton Abbey was hands down one of the most influential television shows of the last decade. The sumptuous soap opera, set during the turbulent early decades of the 20th century, swept viewers away into a world of romance and drama. The show’s massive success seemed to single-handedly jump start an arms race for networks to find the “next Downton Abbey,” as the series was not only a linear hit but a streaming blockbuster.

However, it occurred to me while I was scrolling through Netflix recently that the streaming giant hasn’t done anything really to capture Downton Abbey‘s audience. Despite Netflix’s massive library of originals and acquisitions that seem to cater to each user on an individual basis, it’s really hard to find a fabulous, female-focused, romantic period drama on the service. PBS and Masterpiece have the likes of Sanditon and Poldark. Prime Video has Vanity Fair and a huge library of borrowed fare. AMC got into the game with War & Peace, which you can now stream on Hulu, and Hulu’s at least got Harlots and the soon-to-premiere The Great. Even HBO has its version of the genre with Gentleman Jack. But scroll through Netflix all you want: you won’t find a period romance. Most of Netflix’s period fare is for the boys, or the Emmy voters.

In the seven years that Netflix has been crafting its own original productions, the service has yet to really cater to what I’d call the “Masterpiece audience.” Sure, Netflix licenses a boat load of British drama from the BBC and ITV, but they tend to be contemporary dramas like Bodyguard or Requiem. For the most part, all of Netflix’s English-language period pieces come with a distinctly masculine vibe. First, there was the international epic, Marco Polo, which was a martial arts epic posing as a serious international soap. After that, Netflix has produced the 18th century-set Frontier, a Jason Momoa rager about fur trappers in colonial Canada, as well as The Last Kingdom, a rip-roaring action series set in the Dark Ages.

Most recently, Netflix has dropped a British period drama from the man behind Downton Abbey itself, Julian Fellowes. Now, you might think that this series would be a classy romantic romp like two of Fellowes’s other follow ups, Amazon’s Doctor Thorne and EPIX’s Belgravia. While there is a love story in The English Game, the show is actually about how soccer was democratized by professional players in the 1870s. Again, it’s like Netflix is afraid of a period drama that’s not for bros.

There are two exceptions to this, of course, and that is the lavish royal soap opera The Crown and the critically-acclaimed feminist Western Godless. While The Crown is focused on a female character — Queen Elizabeth II — and has its share of soapy scandal, it isn’t exactly the light, frothy escapist fare that Downton Abbey was. The Crown looks at the pomp and majesty of the British royals and attempts to find the human soul struggling behind the carefully constructed public image. Godless, on the other hand, is a dark and dusty tale of survival. Both shows share the distinction of being Emmy winners, and neither of them make me want to swoon into the arms of a brooding British actor. They are cerebral shows, and not the kind of dishy fun PBS has spent 50 years trading on.

Still it just seems odd to me that Netflix has never tried its hand at swoon-y historic romance. This is a streaming service with a show about a Santa Clarita housewife played by Drew Barrymore eating human flesh and a cartoon about a famous celebrity horse dealing with depression. It seems wild that they’ve never thought to adapt one of the thousands of historic romance novels that are in the public domain.

What makes this even more wild is that there are other streaming services that specifically cater to this audience. Acorn TV, BritBox, and PBS’s own Masterpiece channel on Prime Video all feature soapy period romances, as well as cozy countryside crime tales. Both are genres Netflix seems strangely uninterested in, even as rival platforms and upstart services rush to churn these types of stories out. (HBO Max already has nabbed Julian Fellowes’ long-gestating lavish follow up to Downton Abbey, The Gilded Age.)

All that being said, period drama nuts might not want to cancel their Netflix subscription anytime soon. One of superproducer Shonda Rhimes’s first projects with Netflix is Bridgerton. It’s a breezy, sudsy soap opera based on the books by Julia Quinn, and it looks like a fun riff on Jane Austen. However, it’s unclear when Bridgerton will hit Netflix or if the current pandemic has hampered production.

For now, though, period romance fans like myself will have to embrace the locker room of The English Game and take the gory violence of The Last Kingdom if we want to be transported back in time. Netflix cares more about historic warriors than the lovers of the past.

Where to stream Downton Abbey