Bridgerton review: You'd miss René-Jean Page, but it's still an entertaining romp
Bridgerton: Adjoa Andoh as Lady Danbury, and Simone Ashley in season two on Netflix.
Debutante season at Bridgerton is like the Hunger Games of the genteel classes, where your very survival depends on finding the right suitors, the armour is a great frock and towering hairdo, and the lethal shots are fired via sardonic put downs and filthy side-eye glares from the competition.
Everybody’s favourite bodice-ripper is back - and the first episode of Bridgerton series two centres around the beginning of gaming (sorry, dating) season as the young women of London’s high society aim for endorsement from the Queen as Marriage’s Most Wanted. There can be only one winner of the royal diamond nod. While season one had moments of lust, this season sets out to focus on love.
Our Katniss is Edwina Sharma, a young and wide-eyed newcomer to the series and to London society, who is inundated with suitors but has her heart set on a true love match. She is innocent, open-hearted and believes the best of people - as she enters the Queen’s diamond ball to a classical version of Madonna’s Material Girl, you fear for her.
It’s apparent from the outset there are a great deal of frogs to be kissed. The main ‘catch’ is Anthony Bridgerton, a man now hurt and cynical, who professes what he wants from a woman. “Tolerable. Dutiful. Suitable enough hips for childbearing and at least half a brain. That last one is not so much a requirement as a preference in fact.”
Anthony needs some manners put on him and that may come in the form of Kate Sharma, the strong, noble-minded older sibling of Edwina, who has reasons, we learn, for caring deeply about who her sister falls in love with.
You’d miss the star of season one, René-Jean Page, all the same (though he is referred to as being at home with the baby), but there are more than enough new characters introduced to set up viewers for an entertaining and escapist period romp.
The established ones are centre stage too - most notably our own Nicola Coughlan as Penelope Featherington, aka our pithy society gossip columnist Lady Whistledown.
With her closest friends Eloise Bridgerton now out in society whether she likes it or not, Penelope has to sneak her own writings to the printers. This gives Coughlan a chance to raise some laughs incognito, as the Galway girl uses a strong Irish accent to disguise her characters’ roots.
A great deal of Bridgerton’s success is in how it sends up a certain dysfunctionality in British high society and social climbing of the period.
“I yearn for someone fresh, someone unexpected, to turn this season on its head,” hisses the Queen as the ball approaches. It seems she and we will get just that.
Bridgerton is available on Netflix now
