City of Vice

I missed this when it originally aired on Channel 4 back in 2008, and stumbled across it on YouTube. What a little masterpiece. It was filmed on a budget, but despite this, the show's creators have managed to accurately portray the London of the 1750s. It's a million miles away from the sanitised period drama of Bridgerton and Downton Abbey. Here we have Georgian London in all its filth and depravity. Pickpockets, beggars, dirt, rotten toothed urchins, prostitutes, corruption. It doesn't shy away from the darker aspects of this era, such as the city being a hotbed of child prostitution.

I especially liked Iain Glen's portrayal as the blind John Fielding. He was appointed magistrate at Bow Street, becoming renowned as the "Blind Beak", and allegedly being able to recognize three thousand criminals by the sounds of their voices.