Irish Examiner view: Bridgerton comes with price to pay

The purchasing of multiple entertainment platforms may have passed its high watermark

Simone Ashley as Kate Sharma and Jonathan Bailey as Anthony Bridgerton in the second season of Bridgerton. 

So we are back off to Bridgerton this week to revisit the great streaming success of lockdown 2020. Some 82m people logged in during one month; 625m viewing hours were consumed in total. Break out the mannered acting, the Regency fashions, the corsets, the contrived plots, the colour-blind casting, the string quartet versions of Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, and Taylor Swift. The cod history. And, of course, the sex.

With so much quality and popular choice available on streaming, catch-up, and terrestrial, we have travelled a very long distance from Bruce Springsteen’s 1992 lament that more is less — “fifty-seven channels and nothing on”. The Boss’s remedy on that occasion was to take a .44 magnum and empty its six rounds into his TV set. For the Netflix generation, the answer has been to keep spending. But there are signs, in a world where the cost of living is on everyone’s mind, that purchasing multiple entertainment platforms may have passed its high watermark.