Oct 3, 2026, 11:30 AM EDT A contributor at MovieWeb, Dan Selcke is a pop culture fanatic who writes and talks about movies, TV and books, the nerdier the better. He's been working on news, reviews, editorials, interviews and podcasts for over 10 years. Dan has been published in The A.V. Club, Metro, Salon and elsewhere. He's interviewed actors and filmmakers from shows like Dune: Prophecy and The Rings of Power. When he's run out of things to write, Dan operates a YouTube channel where he dives into more depth on all things movies, TV, and pop culture. Sign in to your MakeUseOf account Add Us Summary Generate a summary of this story Like Like follow Follow followed Followed Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap Historical fiction shows give you the best of all possible worlds. They're based in fact, so you feel like you're learning something while you watch, but they also hone in on the most interesting parts of history, which can be as exciting as any action film.

One of the best historical fiction series of the 21st century is The Last Kingdom, a medieval epic about the bloody, formative years of England. The Last Kingdom has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 91%, which is very impressive, but there's one Netflix series that beats it.

Alias Grace is based on a book of the same name by Margaret Atwood, the author behind books like The Handmaid's Tale, The Blind Assassin, and Oryx and Crake. While Atwood is known for writing fiction with a genre edge — The Handmaid's Tale, her most famous work, is set in an alternate reality where the United States is taken over by a theocratic dictatorship — Alias Grace is about an actual woman named Grace Marks (Sarah Gadon), who was convicted of the 1843 murders of Thomas Kinnear, her employer (Paul Gross), and of Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper (Anna Paquin), in Ontario, Canada.

Grace is an Irish immigrant who takes a job as a maid when she's still a teenager. Like the best historical fiction shows, Alias Grace excels at engrossing us in the time period. Nineteenth century Canada is recreated with loving detail, from the costumes to the sets to, importantly, the social mores of the time.

We pick up with Grace in jail, when she's interviewed by Dr. Simon Jordan (Edward Holcroft), a handsome psychologist brought in to try and prove Grace's innocence. Grace tells Simon her life story, which is where the show gets really interesting.

NetflixCloseCredit: NetflixCredit: NetflixCredit: NetflixCredit: NetflixCredit: Netflix Grace's story begins predictably enough: she talks about the difficult crossing from Ireland to Canada, suffering abuse at the hands of her father, and securing work. But as the show goes on, there's reason to doubt her honestly and maybe even her sanity.

To start, Grace is a famous "murderess" whose story has already been filtered through the eyes of many other parties. The press has disparaged her, her lawyer altered her story, and the doctors at the asylum where she spent time ignored her version of events and put her through inhuman tests. She loses her mother early in life, and is separated from her siblings. Even Dr. Simon starts seeing Grace in a distorted way as he begins to fantasize about her. Is it possible to find the real Grace under all this trauma, grief, fear, lust, and rumor?

The show doesn't give us easy answers. Instead, it asks tough questions about the fallibility of memory, the haziness of history, and whether men can ever see women without projecting their own desires onto them.