It was clear during the first season of Bridgerton – which reigned over prime pandemic Netflix last year – that creator Shonda Rhimes was taking full creative liberty over Regency-era dramas. There were acoustic Ariana Grande covers, a Black queen of England, and other perfect anachronisms to accompany a love story so lusty, its sex scenes were analysed and deconstructed in national media for weeks after its debut.
The second season, meanwhile, presents a new family to simultaneously scrutinise and stan: the Sharmas. The chaotic, beautiful and historically/culturally inaccurate telling of this Indian family in the early 19th century is the exact spin that I needed in a series that so brutally decided that keeping Daphne and not Regé-Jean Page’s Duke around was morally acceptable.
