5 Reasons to Stream German Period Drama 'The Empress' on Netflix

Although many of us love period dramas, far too many viewers assume that historical costume drama is strictly the purview of British and/or English-language television. And even these often tend to fall into specific buckets: stories about Tudor England, the Regency period, the Victorian era, or the years surrounding World War II. But the world is wide and there are—or at least there should be—stories from all sorts of eras from all over the world that are worth telling.

This is why I'm here to not only tell you to watch the sumptuous new costume drama The Empress; I'm here to tell you to watch it with the subtitles on. The series follows the dramatic, romantic, and sadly doomed story of the infamous Empress Elisabeth I of Austria, and the churning, changing world she and her husband tried their best to navigate.

The series is a German Netflix Original and stars Turkish-German actress Devrim Lingau as Elisabeth. Best known in Germany for her roles on Carmilla and Auerhas, she's joined by newcomer Philip Froissant, a Munich-born actor who appeared in the 2021 Netflix film Black Island. Other notable cast members include Almila Bagriacik, Wiebke Puls, Elisa Schlott, and Jördis Triebel.