The latest sumptuous entertainment epic to go back to pre-war Shanghai is HBO Go’s 45-part Legacy , which, beginning in the late 1920s, relates the story of the privileged Yi family. Qin Lan (Lady Zhongling), Zhang Nan (Lady Zhongxiu) and Wu Jinyan (Lady Zhongyu) star as three stepsisters primed to inherit their wealthy father’s high-end department store. Not that any such opportunity is likely to be straightforward with siblings from different mothers. Zhongling, elegant, restrained and level-headed, is challenged by naive, sulky, dissatisfied Zhongxiu, but not nearly as much as she is by Zhongyu, the prodigal daughter of Yi Xinghua (Liu Jun). Obnoxious, indulged and happy to give servants the runaround, Zhongyu is nevertheless welcomed back into the fold on her sudden return from Singapore. Until, that is, she announces that her arrival in Shanghai has nothing to do with family affections and everything to do with her power play for control of the family company. Compounding these difficulties are the interesting times in which the Yi clan lives: the stench of war is already wafting through the endless rooms of its mansion, a place so lavishly decorated it can only be bombed, eventually. Xi Weian (Nie Yuan), an officer in the militia, models a uniform whose like will become popular after 1949; gangs of thugs prowl the streets; and patriarch Yi, despite his prominence, is running afoul of a taxation-happy government. Ultimately, the three mismatched stepsisters can do the smart thing and bury their differences for the sake of their “noble family” and its business interests. Or they can carry on as prototype American reality-television stars. Either way, new mutinies are obliterating ancient grudges – and Shanghai will never be Paris, eastern branch, again. South Korean reality show Change Days is about breaking up couples Grace period For a different strain of societal upheaval and affluent domesticity in even posher frocks, call in at Sanditon (BBC First), the chocolate-box seaside town in southern England dreamed up by Jane Austen and whose name she gave to her unfinished, final novel. Although a “sandy town” it indubitably is, “dreamed up” is admittedly something of a stretch, Austen supposedly having based the place on Worthing in Sussex. Nor is the six-part second series an adaptation: fine though it is, the source material ran out early in season one, making season two an expansion franchise (hence the “inspired by” note in the credits). Regardless, it’s all irresistible fun for lovers of luscious period dramas of the likes of Bridgerton (coincidentally set in the same Regency period as Sanditon ). Adding a frisson to the air from the first instalment here is a regiment of British Army redcoats, who have pitched camp outside town and whose Colonel Lennox has Austen’s uncompromisingly independent heroine Charlotte Heywood (Rose Williams) in his sights. Rubbery-faced actor and comedian Kevin Eldon is an inspired Reverend Hankins (good-hearted but out of step) and Kris Marshall is the ever-optimistic entrepreneur Tom Parker, who envisages a seaside-resort future for the town. Eclipsing the lot, however, is Anne Reid as the splendidly contemptuous, mansion-dwelling grand dame Lady Denham, who lumbers into every social exchange like a grumpy battleship. Her ladyship won’t even consider boycotting sugar to help end slavery. Well, nothing else about her is sweet.