Period drama based on beloved book branded 'perfect for Austen fans'

Period drama fans can't get enough of one BBC six-part series based on a beloved book. Adapted from a true story, the drama is set in the eighteenth century and follows four high-born sisters - Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox, who are the great-granddaughters of a king.

The series was originally released in 1999 and follows the sisters' turbulent marriages, including illegitimate births, a violent rebellion plot and plenty of political intrigue. The series is Aristocrats, starring Sian Phillips, Alun Armstrong and Toby Jones, along with Anne-Marie Duff and Hugh Sachs.

The mini-series is based on Stella Tillyard's biography of the sisters, and was nominated for two awards in the Irish Film and Television Awards, and two from the Royal Television Society. The series was released on DVD in 2006, but sadly isn't available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

Reviews branded the show "perfect" for fans of Jane Austen, with one writing: "The first episode of this is somewhat similar to a Jane Austen style story, though it is set in the mid-late 1700s rather than early 1800s.

"After the first episode or two, it becomes generally more serious and more broad. The costumes are very different from Austen films (being set in the preceding era), but they are very beautiful and very accurate to the time period."

Another fan praised the accuracy of the series, writing in a review: "Meticulously adapted from Stella Tillyard's masterpiece by the same name, Aristocrats is a story of magnificent scope and grandeur, but told without the usual gassy adoration of the British upper class. Its basis is not embellished reports and embroidered tales, but the massive archives of correspondence and household and historical records left behind by these women."

While somebody else praised it: "The format and the music seem so redolent of Downton Abbey. Anyone else see it as a forerunner of Fellow's Downton?"