Back in time, forward thinking

Recent historical series feature women who push back against norms.

There’s a joyful scene in the first episode of “The Pursuit of Love”: teenage cousins Linda (Lily James) and Fanny (Emily Beecham) are driving to Oxford for lunch, laughing and shrieking as they career along a country road, the poppunk beats of the 1999 song “Deceptacon” underscoring their elation — just two friends savouring their freedom.

Except the scene takes place in the 1920s and when Linda’s aristocratic father discovers they’ve secretly visited the rooms of a male student he bans Fanny from his house and vows to keep Linda under constant surveillance.

Like other recent period TV series — think Netflix hit “Bridgerton,” Amazon Prime’s “The Great” and Apple TV Plus’s “Dickinson” — “The Pursuit of Love” gives its female characters a measure of self-actualization while still operating within the societal restrictions of the time in which they live. They’re not feminists, but there’s a feminist undercurrent to their struggles.

“Pursuit,” which debuts July 30 on Amazon, is based on the semi-autobiographical 1945 novel of the same name by socialite Nancy Mitford. British actor Emily Mortimer, who wrote, directed and executive-produced this TV adaptation, told Harper’s Bazaar she found the book “radical” and Mitford’s a female voice that is “unafraid.”

The novel is chiefly about the romantic concerns of Linda, the second daughter of Matthew Radlett, Lord Alconleigh; Fanny is the narrator and a regular guest of the eccentric Radlett family.

In Mortimer’s version, love and marriage are still preoccupations, but Linda’s and Fanny’s becomes the central relationship.

As the series follows them from postFirst World War adolescence into adulthood during the Second World War, they take different, sometimes incompatible, paths in life but always return to their reliance on each other.

In “Pursuit,” as in “Bridgerton,” the Shonda Rhimes-produced dramedy set in England in the early 1800s, and “The Great,” based loosely on the life of 18thcentury Russian empress Catherine the Great, marriage is central to the characters’ stories. It’s considered the only acceptable occupation for upper class women in those times, along with childbearing.

(In “Dickinson,” poet Emily Dickinson, played by Hailee Steinfeld, avoids marriage despite the societal pressures in 1850s Massachusetts, channelling her passion into her writing and her unrequited love for her brother’s wife.)

It’s not that the characters in these historical retellings swear off marriage, but viewers are able to see the institution as part of a patriarchal system that can be detrimental to women rather than just a romantic end point — in a way that might have eluded observers in the time period being portrayed.

For instance, in Season 1 of “Bridgerton,” Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) wants to marry and have a family, but she wants to choose her own husband rather than have one foisted on her by her mother and oldest brother. So she concocts a scheme with the marriageaverse Duke of Hastings (Regé-Jean Page): they’ll pretend to be smitten with each other to help her attract a better class of suitor and to help him scare his off — although obviously things don’t go quite as planned.

In “The Great,” Catherine (Elle Fanning) is an eager bride who soon learns that her new husband, Peter III (Nicholas Hoult), is a selfish, irresponsible man-child. She sets about learning how to work the system to increase her own power, eventually making literal war on her spouse.

Nor are Linda and Fanny adverse to marriage: Linda values romantic love above all else but doesn’t find it within the socially acceptable confines of marriage; Fanny does, but she chafes against sublimating her intellect to being a wife and mother.

The characters quote Virginia Woolf and paraphrase Simone de Beauvoir in Mortimer’s script, demonstrating that they’re aware that the deck is stacked against them as women.

If that all sounds rather serious, know that all these shows have liberal helpings of humour. “The Pursuit of Love,” “Bridgerton” and “Dickinson” also punctuate their soundtracks with anachronistic, modern music, which helps make the women (and men) onscreen feel that much more relatable.

Here are some other historical series worth checking out for women who push back against the conventions that bind them.

Pride and Prejudice (1995)

Jane Austen’s novels are traditional romances in the sense that marrying off her heroines is the end goal, but Elizabeth Bennet is a protagonist that any present-day feminist could get behind. No amount of family or social pressure will induce her to marry a man she doesn’t consider worthy. Though there have been many TV and movie adaptations of the 1813 novel, this BBC miniseries starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth is the gold standard. Stream it on BritBox.

Downton Abbey (2010)

This wildly popular ITV series set in the 1910s and ’20s portrays the lives of a wide cast of characters both upstairs and downstairs on a grand English estate. Though it mainly hews to class conventions, some of its female characters test social propriety: Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) has sex out of wedlock; Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay) marries beneath her station; Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) has an illegitimate child; and their cousin Rose (Lily James) begins an interracial flirtation and eventually marries outside her religion. Stream all seasons on CBC Gem and BritBox.

Outlander (2014)

Based on the bestselling Diana Gabaldon novels, this time travel drama follows British nurse (and later doctor) Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe) from 1940s to 1740s Scotland, where she falls in love with highlander Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan). Claire and later her and Jamie’s daughter, Brianna (Sophie Skelton), push back as best they can against the limitations for women in the era, with Claire continuing to practise medicine. Stream five seasons on Netflix (Season 6 won’t be along until 2022).

Gentleman Jack (2019)

This BBC series about a thoroughly unconventional woman in 1830s England is based on a real person: Anne Lister, dubbed “the first modern lesbian.” Created by the prolific Sally Wainwright (“Happy Valley,” “Scott & Bailey,” “Last Tango in Halifax”), the show stars Suranne Jones (“Coronation Street,” “Scott & Bailey”) as Anne, who dresses like a man, conducts business like a man and takes a wife, if in name only: heiress Ann Walker, played by Sophie Rundle (“Peaky Blinders”). Stream Season 1 on Crave (there’s no release date yet for Season 2).

Anne Boleyn (2021)

I have yet to get a peek at this Channel 5 miniseries about the most famous of Henry VIII’s wives, who had her head cut off after just 1,000 days as queen. It’s set during the last five months of Anne’s life and has been described as a portrayal of her trying to hold onto power in a system in which she has very little. Jodie Turner-Smith (“Queen & Slim”) plays Anne and Mark Stanley (“Game of Thrones,” “Sanditon”) is Henry. Stream it beginning Aug. 6 on Crave.