My Roman Empire… Literally

It started, as many obsessions do, with one innocent little list.

One afternoon I wanted a quick watchlist of period shows — nothing dramatic, just “Oh, I should write down a few of my favorites so I don’t forget them.” I opened a fresh spreadsheet, titled it something normal like Period Dramas to Watch, and dropped in a handful of classics: Pride & Prejudice, Rome, Wolf Hall. A neat little list. Civilized, reasonable.

This lasted approximately nine minutes.

Because the moment I wrote down one title, I remembered another. And then another. And then I thought, Actually, what even counts as a period piece? Which then spiraled into, Okay, but are we talking ancient history only? What about the Bronze Age? What about shows that jump between eras? What about movies set in the 1600s but filmed in the 90s?

Before I knew it, I was deep in a Wikipedia rabbit hole, cross-referencing release years, historical settings, production notes, and “loosely based on” disclaimers like I was preparing a dissertation. I became a one-woman Library of Alexandria for historical screen content. My humble list mutated into an Excel sheet with color coding, filters, decade breakdowns, region categories, and notes so specific I don’t even remember what half of them mean.

Somewhere around row 100, I admitted to myself that this was no longer a casual hobby. By row 300, it became my Roman Empire — the thing I think about way too often, the project that haunts and delights me. And by row 500+, it became something else entirely: a full-blown archive of every historical TV show, movie, miniseries, docudrama, or vaguely period-adjacent piece of content I could track down.

Do normal people spend their free time compiling timelines of cinematic history organized by century? Maybe not. But here I am, a spreadsheet scholar, a curator of corsets and chain mail, a defender of historically questionable wigs.

And honestly? I wouldn’t have it any other way. This ever-growing sheet has become my side project, my passion, my constant reminder that humans have been making stories — and making them again — for thousands of years. We keep returning to the past because it helps us understand the present.

So yes, I quite literally have a Roman Empire. And a Medieval one. And a Regency one. And a surprisingly chaotic 1600s section.

And I’m just getting started.