It is a well-established truth that a bachelor in possession of a handsome fortune need desire nothing more than a wife. The first sentence from Jane Austen’s novel “Pride and Prejudice” falls in Bridgerton never, but the whole series could also be summarized with the universally acknowledged truth, the “universally acknowledged truth”, as it became a dictum.
A man from a good family is looking for a woman from a good family and vice versa. It is the central moment, the most important decision in life in the early 19th century English nobility in the early 19th century. This world with its meticulous sense of rank and the strictly regimented courtship rituals, in which a kiss before marriage, even between lovers who are accepted according to their status, being alone without a chaperone would be a real scandal. It’s, ask millions of Netflix viewers in the early 21st century, the pinnacle of romance.
Told again Bridgerton now about the partner search between duty and desire with a woken twist. Because the Queen and large parts of the cast are not cast in alabaster white, but more diverse than an American college campus in its advertising brochures. At balls, the Bridgerton and Featherington families dance in their brightly colored world to string interpretations of Madonna’s “Material Girl”. And the consistently female sex scenes – one cannot overestimate their importance for the success of the series – are avant-garde even for our time. Bridgerton is wonderfully uninterested in historical or even contemporary realities.
“Bridgerton” is the ideal escapism, which is not completely detached from our otherwise not very candy-colored time
The second season proves that Shonda Rhimes, the great series producer and screenwriter (Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, Inventing Anna), with Bridgerton is at the peak of her creativity. In 2017 she joined Netflix with her production company Shondaland. The series led by showrunner Chris van Dusen Bridgerton was the first production from this deal. The first season was in spring 2021 the most streamed on Netflix of all time and also propelled the Julia Quinn novels on which it is based, onto the bestseller list 18 years after their publication New York Times. Season one, that much is now clear, was not a stroke of luck, but the start of many series years with the Bridgertons. There are a total of eight Bridgerton siblings to be married, and a third and fourth season have already been announced.
There are eight Bridgerton siblings. Daphne (Phoebe Dyvenor), right, found happiness last season. Now it’s her brother Anthony’s (Jonathan Bailey) turn to the left.
(Photo: LIAM DANIEL/NETFLIX)
So this time it’s Lord Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), the eldest Bridgerton offspring, who is supposed to be married. Unlike his sister Daphne, who came to live with her husband, the aristocratic and highly passionate Duke of Hastings (Regé-Jean Page, who unfortunately didn’t want to play in season two), Anthony initially looks less for a flaming connection than for a solid one. The necessary drama is then provided by the fact that a marriage of convenience is soon looming with a woman who has an older sister. All you need to know.
It’s also less the basic plot that Bridgerton makes it so binge-worthy – from the first glance to the yes word, it’s quite predictable – than the how. Then Bridgerton mixes the best of many worlds into a light, gripping and not stupid story. There is the austere setting from Jane’s Austen’s world, the romance of not being allowed to say anything in rainy palaces, not being allowed to show and certainly not being allowed to touch. And the potential for scandal gossip Girlplus the colors Marie Antoinette of Sofia Coppola and the kitschy ideal of love larger than life twilight. That dating from the identity of Lady Whistledown, the Gossip Girl Bridgertonno eternal mystery is made, is just an example of what Bridgerton better than other drama series.
Modern rhetoric in a world of powder wigs might seem ridiculous if Bridgerton weren’t so contrived
But Bridgerton is particularly ingenious in the interplay between modernity and antiquity. The series has a super-modern veneer and offers a light-hearted counter-narrative to historical realities of gender and race in a no-nonsense manner. Although Eloise Bridgerton is already complaining that as a woman you are also in Bridgerton do not have the same rights as men. But in the end the Bridgerton women ride out alone, and of course: a black woman can be the English queen here. What else nobody would say in “Pride and Prejudice”: Sentences like “I have to get to know myself first.”
Kate Sharma wants to set her sister up, Anthony Bridgerton wants to finally meet his family obligations and get married. It fits, doesn’t it?
(Photo: LIAM DANIEL/NETFLIX)
Modern rhetoric in a world of powder wigs and horse-drawn carriages might seem ridiculous, if Bridgerton would not be so clearly artificial, not the ideal escapism, which is not completely detached from our otherwise not very candy-colored time. It also camouflages the fact that conservative ideals are at the heart of the fun of the series.
Sure, if corset, then like in Bridgerton. But one can ask oneself, for example, why what is perhaps the most feminine sex scene in television history is found in a scenario in which it is only allowed to take place in marriage. For women, of course, with men one was and is more generous, also in Bridgerton. The tension of not being allowed to is undeniable, but also very yesterday. who the twilight-Has read books, suggesting quite a few Bridgerton-Fans should apply, maybe remember the bad feeling. Romance in a truly modern world also consists not insignificantly of the fact that sex before marriage is taboo. When you know that twilight-author Stephenie Meyer is a practicing Mormon, clarify a few questions about it.
Declaring marriage the highest goal in life is not up to date, no. Maybe there’s just more of the 19th century in us than we think.
Bridgerton Season 2 on Netflix March 25.
You can find more series recommendations here.