6 Reasons Why The Forsytes is Your Next Period Drama Obsession
If passion, ambition, and betrayal aren’t reason enough, here are six more reasons why you’re sure to be hooked on The Forsytes, premiering March 22, 2026, 9/8c on MASTERPIECE on PBS. Watch a trailer for this simmering new series, and mark your calendars for a show that’s so hotly anticipated, its second season is already in the works!
The Forsytes is a Fresh, New Take on a Favorite Classic
The Forsytes isn’t a standard remake of earlier adaptations; it’s basically both a reimagining of and a love letter to the award-winning classic novels of The Forsyte Saga. The addictive drama of secrets and scandals, passion and loyalty, is driven by characters—especially women—whose complexities and depth are explored more than before. All this plays out in the lavish opulence of late-Victorian society, but with an eye towards finding fresh lightness instead of the era’s oft portrayed sooty, foggy darkness.
The Forsytes Stars Top British Talent
Viewers will delight in the show’s many gorgeous castmates, stars and newcomers, just a few of whom include Eleanor Tomlinson (Poldark’s Demelza), starring as lady’s maid turned dressmaker turned love interest, Louisa Byrne; Stephen Moyer (Sexy Beast, True Blood) as Jolyon Sr, elder Forsyte brother and head of the family’s stockbroking firm, and Jack Davenport (The Morning Show, Breathless) as the Forsyte’s unrelentingly ambitious senior son, James. Tuppence Middleton (Downton Abbey: A New Era, Sense8) plays Frances Forsyte, a high-society beauty and power wife whose world unravels with a single, shocking discovery.
The Forsyte Family is Helmed by a Mighty Matriarch
How can the boys behave badly when there’s a mighty matriarch at the helm? Yet even with the exacting standards and droll, knowing affection of Forsyte family matriarch Ann, men will be men, society will not bend, and the heart wants what it wants. Which makes Ann not just a matriarch, but the mother of all drama!
Playing the imposing Forsyte matriarch is Francesca Annis, who went head-to-head with Samantha Bond in WWII drama Home Fires and portrayed an entirely different kind of mum in Flesh & Blood.
The Forsytes Makes Succession Our Business
As in so much great British drama (we see you, Downton Abbey), inheritance is sometimes a battlefield, sometimes a burden, and always a challenge to be met. In The Forsytes, it’s the source of a ruthless succession battle for control of the family’s powerful business, playing out over two generations of Forsyte men—first brothers, and then cousins, with riveting drama and shocking consequences. And it turns out that brothers Jolyon Sr. (Stephen Moyer) and James (Jack Davenport) are rivals in more than just the boardroom!
The Forsytes is From the Makers of Poldark
The Forsytes couldn’t be more different from Poldark in location, time period, or source material. But both are from the creators of Poldark, and both are penned by the same writer, Debbie Horsfield, who brilliantly serves up in The Forsytes what Poldark fans have long relished: romance and rivalries, lavish sets and sumptuous period costumes, strong women, and the dashing men who love them.
The Forsytes is a Feast for the Eyes
With costumes as sumptuous as Downton Abbey’s and torsos as sculpted as Ross’ in Poldark, The Forsytes is a genuine visual delight. Viewers move between lush drawing rooms, imposing boardrooms, and intimate bedrooms, and from bustling London to artistic Paris to romantic Venice.
