To watch this engagingly silly and self-aware comedy is like inhaling a good-sized tank of nitrous oxide. Adapted by Suzanne Allain from her own novel and directed by Emma Holly Jones making her feature debut, it is a romantic Regency romp in the diverse, postcolonial “alt-history” universe popularised by Bridgerton on TV. And casting people of colour as fictional British aristocrats in the declining years of George III need be no more of an affectation than having non-white people play factual kings in Shakespeare’s history plays.
This good-natured entertainment is certainly more watchable than the wince-makingly smug new version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion on Netflix, which misjudges the same approach. Mr Malcolm’s List understands its parameters and limitations and the value of leaving the fourth wall unbroken, and maybe above all it understands that Bridgertonian intrigue is in the brisker tradition of Georgette Heyer, not Austen. Everyone involved takes a demure yet also gleeful pleasure in the ridiculous bonnets and preposterous bows, the furbelows, foppery and unfeasibly tall hats.
