Family, Fortune, and Forsytes: Netflix Revives a Turn-of-the-Century Classic
The Forsyte Saga on Netflix is our current go-to - starring Damian Lewis and Gina McKee
If you love your drama slow-burning, beautifully dressed and emotionally fraught, The Forsyte Saga is your next nostalgic fix. Here’s why the 2002 adaptation of John Galsworthy’s novels still holds up over two decades later.
There’s something about winter that makes a good period drama irresistible. Maybe it’s the flicker of candlelight on silk gowns or the sight of a crackling hearth reflected in polished mahogany. Whatever it is, The Forsyte Saga delivers it in spades. Newly resurfaced on Netflix, this lavish 2002 ITV adaptation is the perfect watch for those craving grandeur, gossip and a touch of moral decay.
Set in late-Victorian and Edwardian London, the series traces the fortunes of the wealthy Forsyte family, an outwardly respectable clan whose glossy façades hide possessiveness, passion and betrayal. The story centres on Soames Forsyte (played with repressed precision by Damian Lewis), a solicitor obsessed with property, status and, disastrously, his beautiful wife Irene (Gina McKee). Her love for another man, architect Philip Bosinney (Ioan Gruffudd), sets off a chain of scandal and heartbreak that ripples through generations.
Across two series, the story spans thirty years of change as Britain shifts from rigid social hierarchies to the stirrings of modern freedom. Costume designer Phoebe De Gaye captures the transition exquisitely: corseted silks give way to looser Edwardian silhouettes as the women of the saga begin to claim space for themselves. Every room, teacup and turn of phrase feels deliberate, from the mahogany-panelled drawing rooms to the soft melancholy of the soundtrack.
It’s also a reminder of how well early-2000s television did period drama, before streaming excess, before everything came with a moral agenda. The cast reads like a who’s who of British talent (Lewis, McKee, Gruffudd, Rupert Graves, Corin Redgrave), and the storytelling is grounded, elegant and unhurried.
If you missed it the first time, The Forsyte Saga is well worth settling into now: sprawling, sumptuous and quietly devastating. The perfect escape for dark evenings, when Christmas wrapping, ironing or curled up with a cup of something delicious.