The most obvious reference point for Bridgerton, the bodice-ripper created by Chris Van Dusen under the aegis of Shonda Rhimes’s Shondaland, is Jane Austen—not the novels, exactly, but the many adaptations of those novels. They range from the rigorously textual (BBC’s Pride and Prejudice) to the dreamily lyrical (Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley), the cinematic masterpiece (Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, adapted by and starring Emma Thompson) to the clunky critical take (Patricia Rozema’s Mansfield Park).
Some are made-for-television misfires and some are shiny Oscar contenders, but these adaptations all have the same hallmarks: rich, eligible bachelors; blushing single ladies; stodgy parties called “balls,” where men and women face each other in lines and dance awkwardly, touching as little as possible; a meltdown, partway through, about family fortunes or social status (or, ideally, both). Austen’s prose is characterized by both her wit and her knowing restraint; she was responding to the romance literature of the time with sparkling social commentary, leaving the salacious details of pleasure gardens and sexual ruin to other writers.
Bridgerton, which is adapted from the contemporary novels by Julia Quinn, is like all of Austen’s work thrown into a blender with Gossip Girl, after Austen’s restraint has been carefully set aside for use at some other time. Flashy, wildly anachronistic, distinctly American in its conception of British mores, and narrated by a high-society gossip columnist with the absurd pen name Lady Whistledown (voiced by Julie Andrews, of all people), it’s brilliantly perverse, a loving embrace of the period romance that sends up every Austen trope along the way.
Sometimes—at least for this die-hard Austenite—it’s a bit maddening to be so thoroughly tweaked by an impudent show that cares so little for historical accuracy and indulges so much in contemporary wish fulfillment. But on the other hand—and this is very important—who cares? Bridgerton is determined to have a ball, and by the second or third scene where chamber musicians cover a contemporary pop star—the show features cheeky versions of songs by Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish—I found myself succumbing to the outré getups, the romantic angst, and the ridiculous names. (Okay, almost. I mean, seriously—the Featherington sisters?)
First and foremost, Bridgerton dispenses with the period-appropriate shades of white we expect from Austen adaptations. The dresses, jewelry, and even wigs are practically in a tropical palette—and while the titular Bridgerton family is white, the wide cast of characters in high society are a multiracial set, right up to the queen of England, Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel, in a haughty, attention-hungry turn).
Some historians contend that this Queen, the wife of George III and mother to 15 children, had Black ancestry via her Portuguese family. Bridgerton takes this idea and runs with it, suggesting in a brief, handwavey aside midseason that Charlotte’s marriage to George broke the color barrier in English aristocracy. The implications are enormous; after all, George III’s American colonies brought in profit via slavery, and a Black queen would at the very least have indicated a warmer reception for Meghan Markle. But for Bridgerton, the ramifications are much simpler: a race-blind aristocracy opens up a wider array of hot young things to flirt with each other.
Bridgerton’s chief hot young thing is Simon, the Duke of Hastings, played with dashing sheer presence by Regé-Jean Page. Page has almost no character beats to work with except “smolder,” but damn if he doesn’t work the angle to death, strolling into every scene with a swagger-and-pause that says, “Look at me: I’m wearing clothes.”
He is, indeed, wearing clothes (well, most of the time). Somehow, that single fact is enough to keep us looking. Despite this magnetism, or perhaps because of it, the duke is rakishly determined to never marry—to the despair of the dowager Lady Danbury (Adjoa Andoh), the closest thing he has to a parental figure. Meanwhile, the wealthy and well-connected Bridgerton family, headed by Lady Violet (Ruth Gemmell), is navigating the debut season of daughter Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor), a waif with the unfortunately bland aesthetics of a Disney princess. (One of her dresses literally sparkles.) Daphne and Simon are bound to collide, if only because her older brother Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), who is obsessed with propriety and also conducting an affair with an opera singer, is determined to keep them apart.
Convoluted romantic plotting ensues, narrated to us by Lady Whistledown—who keeps us updated on all of these characters, and a half-dozen others. There are the Featheringtons, social climbers with gaudy dresses who tend to alienate members of good society; their country cousin Marina Thompson (Ruby Barker), sent to London with a secret; a younger Bridgerton brother who finds himself invited to, er, artistic parties. The story packs this narrow slice of London society with every type of scandal it can imagine—gambling, illegitimate children, infidelity, gay lovers, illegal boxing—while also loading its characters with aspirations that they will revisit, doggedly, until the plot releases them from their torment.
Yes, that is code for sex. Bridgerton is obsessed with the bodies of its aristocrats—their bodily fluids, even—determined to peel back the veil of propriety and make these stuffed shirts into sweating, menstruating, ejaculating humans. Shondaland’s writers and directors, freed from network television constraints, get to be as specific and detailed as they wish about the mechanics of what their characters are doing. Bridgerton, in other words, is a horny-ass show, and one that appears attuned to the straight female gaze. (There are multiple scenes where the male partner gives the female partner oral sex, and none in the reverse. Wish fulfillment!) At the very least, all this emphasis on sexual logistics is educational—and also, one assumes, intended to be gratifying.