Nostalgia, Series and Imagined Empires: How TV Series Rewrite the History

Over the last fifteen years, historical television series have become central instruments in the construction of the contemporary imaginary, assuming the role of genuine symbolic archives of the past. This article analyzes the relationship between nostalgia, seriality, and the representation of imagined nations and empires, showing how contemporary period drama does not merely reconstruct history but rather produces interpretations of the past filtered through present-day fears, political tensions, and identity-based desires. From this perspective, historical fiction can be interpreted as a form of “science fiction of the past,” capable of transforming historical memory into a shared emotional and cultural experience. Drawing on Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities,” the article highlights the role played by global streaming platforms in disseminating new forms of cultural and national belonging. Algorithms privilege familiar, nostalgic, and easily recognizable content, thereby transforming historical nostalgia into a genuine industrial strategy. Series such as The Crown, Downton Abbey, and Peaky Blinders elaborate an imperial nostalgia linked to British institutional continuity, the crisis of elites, and the myth of an ordered past. At the same time, Babylon Berlin uses the Weimar Republic to reflect upon contemporary democratic fragilities and the rise of populism. The analysis also extends to Asian, African, and Indian productions, demonstrating how historical seriality has become a tool of global cultural soft power. In China, productions such as Empresses in the Palace and The Long Ballad reinterpret the dynastic past as a symbol of political and cultural continuity. South Korean historical K-dramas, such as Kingdom and Mr. Sunshine, combine national memory, colonial trauma, and cultural diplomacy, while Indian productions such as Sacred Games and Heeramandi reinterpret colonialism, urbanization, and identity conflicts within the global context of streaming culture. Particular attention is devoted to the linguistic and diasporic dimension of contemporary seriality. Multilingual series such as Pachinko demonstrate how digital platforms become spaces of identity reconstruction for migrant communities, while the aestheticization of history through costumes, set design, and social media practices renders the past increasingly “Instagrammable” and globally consumable. In conclusion, the primacy of contemporary historical series depends upon their ability to reflect present anxieties and hopes. The global fascination with lost kingdoms, declining aristocracies, and imagined empires does not represent mere nostalgic escapism, but rather constitutes a way through which contemporary societies reflect upon the crisis of political and cultural belonging. Rather than simply narrating the past, these productions use it as a symbolic language through which to interrogate the present, ultimately asking what it means today to belong to an “imagined community.”