When I saw the blurb for Bridgerton on Netflix I knew I had to watch it immediately. A regency romance novel (see my post here for more about the genre) made into a miniseries!
The opening scenes were entrancing. How many regency romances have I read that were set in these locales? And now I was seeing what they actually -- er, "actually" -- look like. (Very, very clean, for one thing.)
The plot was relaxingly familiar. A supercilious, Darcy-like duke and a charming debutante enter into a flirtation of convenience -- she, in order to attract eligible suitors, and he, in order to keep matchmaking mamas away.
After the first couple of episodes I realized that the plot was not just generally familiar -- my god, how many regency romances go this route? -- but perhaps specifically familiar, because the show is based on a book series by Julia Quinn. Have I read any of those books? I mean, maybe? Some of the covers look familiar -- but like the plots, the covers of regency romances all fall into three or four tropes.
The Netflix series followed the beats of a regency romance pretty closely, including sex scenes coming right on schedule (and one pretty horrible scene where consent was somewhere between reluctant and non-existent -- thankfully uncommon in more recent books). The actors, including some playing "Hollywood homely" characters, were as beautiful as the eye candy described in the books.
But the Netflix series had one wonderful innovation: many of the main characters were not white. At first I thought this was simply race-blind casting, but about halfway through it became clear that this regency story is even more of an alternate history than most regency stories. It really was lovely.
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