There’s something about a time gone by that just gets the blood pumping. At least that’s how TV tends to present the past, as a time of unbridled passion and forbidden desire. But no one can deny that the stricter social norms of the past infuse period-specific stories with a tempting aura of misbehaving.
The genre of romance-tinged dramas has given us plenty of steamy series that turned up the heat on some otherwise darker moments in history—the reign of Henry VIII, the American Revolution, McCarthy-era Washington D.C., the lawless era of pirates, the perils of sex work in 18th-century London, and even the Roman Colosseum.
Whatever the case or era may be, sex is just more satisfying when you have to unlace a corset or defy prejudicial laws to make it happen. In that spirit, let’s rank 15 of the steamiest period drama series from across the timeline of history.