There's something special about watching a film or TV show with beautiful interiors – you don't just want to watch it, you want to get inside it and live there. Many of our favourite shows and movies, whether they're brand new or childhood favourites, are the ones that feature beautiful houses and gardens where we'd really like to spend some time. Read on, then, for our favourite series and films to watch with interesting interiors, from the ones we're currently talking about around the Condé Nast water cooler, to the timeless classics that never go out of style.
Current favourites
If you needed any more convincing to watch a spy show that already boasts Keira Knightley, Ben Whishaw and Sarah Lancashire in the main roles, then here it is. Netflix’s dark and pacy thriller is set against the backdrop of the wintry London we know so well from Christmas rom-coms, with appearances by much loved pubs The Coal Hole, The Westminster Arms and The Palm Tree (all jazzed up with fairy lights), plus a secret meeting at Pines and Needles in Victoria Park and scenes in Liberty in all its festive glory. But the jewels of the series' sets are Keira Knightley’s character Helen Webb’s elegant six-bedroom house in Crystal Palace and Mrs Reed’s apartment overlooking the Houses of Parliament. Funnily enough, eagle eyed viewers might recognise said apartment from our archive…
If palaces are your thing, then we highly recommend giving the Austrian series The Empress a watch. It tells the story of the Empress Elisabeth (Sisi), who married the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef I in the 1850s and became a hugely beloved figure in the empire. Wild and romantic in her youth, she had a difficult time adjusting to court life (including plenty of run-ins with her imperious mother-in-law), and this is the main subject of the series. The hugely ornate palaces of Vienna form much of the backdrop (although most of Season 1 was filmed in grand houses around Bavaria, and Season 2, which has recently come out on Netflix, was filmed in Prague), and there are plenty of scenes of the grandly dressed characters swishing through gilded rooms and formal gardens.
The Paramount TV show Yellowstone, which has just released its final season, is a brilliant watch on many levels. Featuring Kevin Costner as an embattled Montana rancher with a heart-stoppingly beautiful ranch house, it's full of slightly soapy melodrama and magnificent landscapes, but it also has some interesting things to say about the American frontier mindset and the state of Native American life in the West today. On top of all of this, we're completely fascinated by the interiors of Kevin Costner's (sorry John Dutton's) ranch. It's the perfect embodiment of cowboy style (rich cowboy style, admittedly). A vision of rustic wood, leather furniture, woven textiles and cowboy art, it looks deeply comfortable and perfectly suited to its surroundings. The Duttons even eat off the marvellous, highly collectible Westward Ho china, which we'd be desperate to collect if it didn't look a bit odd in an otherwise thoroughly English house…
The Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper's brilliant novel has been taking our TV screens by storm lately, and it's not hard to understand why. Looking back at the excesses of the 1980s is incredibly fun, from the flamboyant costumes to the constant bonking. And then there are the interiors. The series was filmed at some beautiful country houses in the Cotswolds and Wiltshire, and there are chintzy patterns, ruffles and fringes galore to enjoy. We can't decide which house we'd rather live in: Rupert Campbell Black's elegant Georgian pile, or the crumbling Priory, home to TV journalist Declan O'Hara and his family.
We loved the slick noughties feel of the original Mr & Mrs Smith starring Brangelina, but this new remake for TV (starring the phenomenal Maya Erskine and Donald Glover) is a whole new level of aspirational living. Think cool gadgets and gizmos of Spy Kids meets interiors from Soho Home. The pink plaster bathroom in Mr and Mrs Smith is so exquisite you almost miss the body being dismembered in the bathtub. The undulating window frames, earthy-toned walls, perfectly crumpled linen bedding and oak-panelled office in this decked out New York brownstone all provide a perfectly cool and sensual backdrop for the sex and drama to unfold.
Rustic and delicious, Tran Anh Hung creates the scullery of dreams in his latest French masterpiece, The Taste of Things. The film’s main character is the food, sliced and snapped, boiled and bubbled in the glowing afternoon light. And the production designer Toma Baquéni creates the perfect stage for flavours to unfurl. The mismatching raw wooden furniture, vast stone fireplace, bunches of fresh herbs and copper pans adorning the walls – the organic beauty of the interiors perfectly match the idyllic hush of the film.
Perennially enjoyable box sets
HBO's The Gilded Age is full of spectacular interiors that bring to life how the super-rich magnates of the end of the 19th century lived in New York. Created by Julian Fellowes (the writer behind Downton Abbey), it is based very much in Edith Wharton's world, and it's fitting that the great novelist also wrote a popular volume on decorating. From the summer ‘cottages’ of the vastly rich to their expansive Fifth Avenue mansions (who can imagine having a ballroom in Manhattan now?), these are interiors to goggle at.
Speaking of Julian Fellowes, we could never omit Downton Abbey from this list, filled as it is with grand ‘upstairs’ interiors (mostly filmed at Highclere Castle) and the more pared-back ‘downstairs’ kitchens and offices where the servants hold sway. Those downstairs spaces have launched a thousand Farrow & Ball paint colours and Plain English kitchens, so really we at House & Garden have a lot to thank this iconic series for. Besides all this, it's such good fun that it can stand many rewatches.
The titular character's apartment in Seattle is a model of chic urban life, just as stylish now as it was in the 1990s. Abstract art, African sculptures, classic modernist furniture and an imitation of Coco Chanel's sofa from her Paris atelier add up to a famously ‘eclectic’ interior, as Frasier pompously explains it. Although his decorating philosophy is regularly deflated by his father and Daphne, becoming a running joke in the show, it is a genuinely elegant and considered space, even with the addition of Martin's battered recliner. Plus, who wouldn't want a floor-to-ceiling windows and a terrace overlooking the Space Needle? Frasier's brother Niles also has some pretty amazing (and more traditionally decorated) quarters, starting with the vast mansion he shares with Maris in the early seasons and moving to his bachelor pad in The Montana, a ritzy building where he reclines on a chaise longue of an evening with his pet cockatoo.
How many decisions on who will be offered up as a corporate ‘blood sacrifice’ have ever been made in such luxurious settings as those on display in Succession? After all, rare is the series that centres on a family as hyper-rich as the sado-nepotistic Roy clan. Wonder as these awful, hilarious people (metaphorically) knife each other in the back against a backdrop of sleek New York penthouse chic, and thank your lucky stars you’re not as well-off (probably) as they are, and live somewhere not entirely constructed from plush leather and chrome fittings.
Like the famous lavender-toned apartment in Friends, Dex’s impeccably designed warehouse flat in the new Netflix hit One Day seems far too spectacular for a patchily employed presenter-cum-patisier. Let’s put it down to the 90s economy. Regardless, heartthrob Dexter has some pause-worthy moments in this turn-of-the-century pad, from high steel windows, to exposed brick walls, retro furniture and Aegean blue panelled walls – all proof that 00s interiors are back with a bang.
The 1997 BBC classic Pride and Prejudice (available to watch on BBC iPlayer) never gets old, and was filmed in some stonking houses and in the ridiculously pretty village of Laycock in Wiltshire, which is just as magical in the flesh. The Bennets’ house, pale and pretty with its block-printed wallpapers and four-poster beds, is endlessly inspirational. Our other favourite 1990s Jane Austen adaptations, including the 1995 Persuasion and Ang Lee's Sense & Sensibility from the same year, have similarly understated, cottagey interiors at their hearts, which to our minds feel grounded in reality and incredibly chic. If you prefer a more fever-dreamy version of Regency interiors, look to more modern adaptations such as the 2020 Emma, which has hyped-up, sugary rooms worthy of a cartoon princess, but incredibly beautiful for all that.
And while we're on the subject of sugary, hyped-up Regency rooms, the ongoing Bridgerton saga (plus its prequel, Queen Charlotte) is full of showstopping interiors, albeit often dripping with flowers in a startling way. The show has been filmed in some of Britain's most impressive houses, from Blenheim Palace to Castle Howard, and it can become quite a fun game trying to figure out what was filmed where.
While we're on the subject of palaces, Netflix's The Crown is hard to beat for goggling at the drawing rooms and bedrooms of Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Kensington Palace, Balmoral and more. It is staggering how well the set design team recreated these little-known interiors, and there is endless detail to take in. Our only complaint would be the way that the series has been made to look like it's always 3pm on a gloomy January afternoon – presumably this is meant to reflect the heavy atmosphere of tradition, but surely it can't be as consistently depressing as all that to live in a palace.
Gerald Durrell's classic memoirs of his pre-war childhood, beginning with the first volume My Family and Other Animals, are absolutely delightful, both for their descriptions of nature but also for their depictions of his slightly potty family and their various friends rattling around in crumbling Corfu villas. Based on the books, the ITV series The Durrells, which is gradually making its way onto Netflix, has found the perfect run-down, sun-drenched villa with dreamily dilapidated interiors.
Back in the modern world, we'd move into both houses featured in Grace & Frankie without thinking twice. This Netflix comedy features two opposites-attract elderly ladies (Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin) making a life together after their husbands leave them to become a couple. Fortunately, they have a heavenly California beach house to do it in (decorated in literal coastal grandma style) with a massive kitchen island, a bohemian art studio for Frankie, and of course, the ability to walk straight out onto a perfect beach. The ex-husbands' Spanish-style villa is just as lovely – we especially adore their spacious plant-dotted courtyard complete with an outdoor bar.
The spaces in which mother and daughter duo Lorelai and Rory Gilmore live their lives may not be cutting edge interiors, but who can resist the cosy fantasy of small-town American life they radiate? From Lorelai's cluttered, mildly shabby but very comfortable Stars Hollow house to her parents' grand, damask-bedecked Hartford mansion, these are houses we'd want to spend a bit of time in. A special mention to the Dragonfly Inn, the perfect New England boutique hotel where Lorelai and Sookie work, and Mrs Kim's antiques shop, which is really rather good now we look back at it.
One of the original prestige TV series of the 2000s, Mad Men is still a brilliant drama, and staggeringly good when it comes to recreating the costumes and interiors of the 1960s. Don and Megan's New York apartment in the later seasons is perhaps the high point, with its sunken seating area (it's surely time for these to come back), breakfast bar, and still-covetable mid-century modern furniture.
Timeless movies
I Am Love and Call Me By Your Name by Luca Guadagnino are two of the most beautiful films we've ever seen – sort of unsurprising as Guadagnino has his own interior design studio. Both films showcase an envy-inducing way of life in Italian houses – in the former everything is completely, impeccably glamorous in Milan, while in the latter you get more of a romantically dilapidated country house vibe. A special mention must also go to A Bigger Splash, in which Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes wind each other up (with disastrous results) in a very chic Italian holiday rental.
With his extraordinary eye for detail and immediately recognisable aesthetic, Wes Anderson is an undeniable master of interiors. Every film he creates is singularly beautiful and transportive, but The Grand Budapest Hotel with its sugar-coated vision of a grand mountain hotel in 1930s central Europe is one of the best. You might not want to take actual inspiration from the interiors (the crimson, pink and purple colour scheme is a tiny bit eye-watering) but they're a wonder to behold.
Legendary writer and director Nancy Meyers has created some of most beautiful interiors that we'd genuinely want to move into, from the glorious Hamptons beach house of Something's Gotta Give to the now-iconic sets of The Holiday, which have something to offer both to Americans dreaming of the English countryside and English viewers longing for some LA sunshine. And let's not forget the perfect London townhouse and equally perfect Napa wine estate in The Parent Trap. If we could choose just one of her sets though, it would be Meryl Streep's Spanish-style house in Santa Barbara in It's Complicated. The plot has her renovating it to make it bigger and better, but in our eyes it cannot be improved. We'd quite happily take all of it, from the well-appointed kitchen to the thriving vegetable garden.
Pre-Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes made this darker, seedier take on the upstairs, downstairs life of an English country house between the wars. Really it's a murder mystery, which makes it particularly good, but a lot of the Downton ingredients are there, including scheming valets, difficult grandes dames, and plenty of social faux pas. Many of the interiors were filmed at Syon House in Chiswick, with Wrotham Park in Herefordshire providing the exterior shots. The servants' quarters, meanwhile, were filmed at Ston Easton Park in Somerset – and how iconic they have become.
Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette is the precursor to lots of TV shows with anachronistic attitudes and seriously sugary interiors, including Bridgerton. It's a maximalist's dream, packed with gilded palaces, formal French gardens and damask fabric galore. Famously it was actually shot at Versailles, so it's as good a way as any to get a look inside the iconic palace's interiors without actually going there.
While we're in France, who doesn't love the romantic, super saturated portrayal of Paris in the classic film Amelie and the super saturated portrayal of Paris. It’s such a unique representation of the city and its interiors – featuring classic bistros and parquet-floored Haussmann buildings – that everyone should see.
If we're thinking about mildly eccentric English interiors, few can beat those depicted in the classic Paddington 2, and we're thinking in particular of the house of Phoenix Buchanan, the film's antagonist played by Hugh Grant. We would touch nothing except the gallery wall filled with photos of a young and brooding Grant: that can be removed. But the green conservatory is a design classic, with its multi-coloured stained glass panels, the leopard print occasional chair, and the yellow daybeds. It is a perfect room.
Another classic to watch with the kids, the 2005 film Nanny McPhee has fascinating interiors you can never tire of. Much like the children, the rooms are utterly chaotic and borderline bonkers. The attic room is a particular stand out with its domed ceiling, Charleston-esque decorative painting and a window that we can only dream of replicating.
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