There is something inherently embarrassing about watching Bridgerton in Britain. It is so palpably, monstrously, uninhibitedly woke; an American fever dream of England in which an all-English (and the odd Australian) cast cavort as members of the ‘ton’ for money they’d probably never get from the BBC.
In front of the great Bridgerton mood board scrawled with such words as ‘Downton Abbey’, ‘Jane Austen’, ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ and – of course – the most Shondaland touch of all, ‘Diversity!’, the likes of Adjoa Andoh and Lorraine Ashbourne do their thing while (one imagines) the suits at Shondaland clap with pleasure.
Shondaland is the woman (Shonda Rhimes) and production company behind Netflix’s adaptation of the Julia Quinn novels. In Rhimes’s Bridgerton, minority actors and those with disabilities (including deafness) outnumber those that one might imagine peopled the Regency court. Central to the all-shapes-sizes-and-colours doctrine is the portly Penelope, played by Palestine activist Nicola Coughlan, who lurked unnoticed until bestie Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) returned her affection last season in a stretch of credulity too far.
By and large, the wacky diversity approach works – and Shonda’s crew have gone the whole hog in the latest series. If one is left wondering if there were really so many Korean or Caribbean households in the Regency court, or whether half the upper-class women in London really were black in 1815, then one is free to look this up. In the court of Bridgerton, all that matters are the host of attractive new faces – and heaving decolletages.
As ever, each episode could be an eighth of its length. Yet, this is the most interesting season yet. The reason is that the love story is more beguiling and romantic than usual. This is a tale of hidden identity, class confusion and an intense upstairs-downstairs theme, revolving around two of the more interesting characters and actors the series has yet turned to.
With maid-master plots, one worries that the whole thing will be about the ‘downstairses’ getting ideas above their station – which can be so tiresome to watch. Must Bridgerton, I worried, take on workers’ rights too? Because if there was one blessed place left where people could be expected to stay in their station, it was period drama.
In the court of Bridgerton, all that matters are the host of attractive new faces – and heaving decolletages
But not any more. In this case, though, it’s (largely) ok because the worker in question – the leading lady and love interest of Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) – turns out to be immensely talented and also ill-used. What’s more, this beautiful girl Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha) is not quite a servant of the usual sort.
Sure, we meet her stealing her mistress’s clothes and going incognito to the Bridgertons’ masquerade ball, aided and abetted by her below-stairs compadres. We see her cut a bedazzling figure in the same room as Benedict, the libertine second son of the vast Bridgerton brood, who has been instructed by his mother Lady Violet (Ruth Gemmell) to meet the hordes of debutantes there to win his favour.
Young Sophie catches his eye while staring lovingly and ‘full of joy’ at a large chandelier. She then confesses she can’t dance when he asks her to. And yet she speaks beautifully and looks perfect. They have a moment outside and Benedict – who normally inhabits a half-lit world of booze, art, threesomes and mistresses – is inevitably drawn to this unaffected, smoking-hot mystery woman. Boy does he try to find out more, but the clock strikes midnight and off she goes, nameless, without address, cutting him dead. That state of affairs doesn’t last.
Sophie’s back story is compelling. Almost Dickensian. She was born merely the ward of her father, Lord Penwood, who had disowned her mother, a servant. While her father was alive, she was illegitimate but treated well enough. But, when he died, her step-mother Lady Penwood (Katie Leung) terrified her about her prospects and forced her to be her unpaid maid all under the guise of ‘protection’. Down with Lady Penwood and her two debutante daughters, and up with Sophie, who should be restored to her rightful high-born place – something Benedict is all too keen to facilitate. Or is he?
The beloved Penelope is one of the only real weak links in this season. She is both unbearably smug and weirdly robotic. Her sex scene with Colin in the carriage (their signature now?) is a fast-bobbing, breathy, unrhythmic affair, as well as overly lascivious – she’s only recently post-partum! One also senses that Coughlan may not have ever held or spoken to a baby before to judge from a painful dandling scene.
The other issue this season is the lack of attempt to draw a line between the psychotherapeutic parlance of today and the regal register of then and there. At one point Benedict says: ‘If I’m being honest…’ And there’s lots of talk of not wanting Sophie to feel ‘uncomfortable’.
But unlike the past few seasons, I have rather enjoyed the Sophie-Benedict-Penwood business, and the drama in the fraught co-dependent relationship between the Queen (Golda Rosheuvel) and her BFF Lady Danbury (Andoh) actually gets near to subtlety.
One almost forgets, at moments, that it’s all just cosplay for the panting mouths and beady eyes of Americans. And then one remembers, and keeps watching anyway.
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