To call Bridgerton “Jane Austen with sex” would do a disservice to both parties. But when it first aired in 2020, Netflix’s adaptation of Julia Quinn’s novels inevitably drew that trite observation. It is, after all, a show that embraces the conventions of social class, stately homes and slow-burn wooing that Austen has popularised for two centuries. If Austen is buttoned-up, unrequited and implicit, then Bridgerton rendered the same dynamics in overt, even garish colours – not to mention a smattering of breasts and buttocks. And where Austen is favoured by folk who are horny for etiquette, Bridgerton catered to an even larger demographic: people who are just plain horny.
As it returns, the show hopes to pick up where it left off, tonally if not narratively. Bridgerton is, fundamentally, about courtship, not marriage. Hence Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) and Simon (Regé-Jean Page), the Duchess and Duke of Hastings, are shuffled out of the pack, and replaced by a bevy of childless singletons. Foremost amongst the new arrivals are the Sharma sisters, Kate and Edwina (Sex Education’s Simone Ashley and Alex Rider’s Charithra Chandran respectively). The Sharmas represent an inversion of Sense and Sensibility’s core dichotomy: Edwina, the Marianne figure, wants to marry “a prince or duke’’, while her older sister Kate – the Eleanor – urges her to marry for love. Yet Kate is the responsible “old maid”, terrifyingly considered, at 26, of too advanced years to find a husband of her own.
