Almost three decades after Bridget Jones first appeared in a whirl of chardonnay, big knickers and body insecurity, she’s back for her fourth appearance on screen. In Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, out in cinemas this month, the eponymous character is no longer a klutzy thirtysomething singleton obsessed with finding a husband, but a klutzy middle-aged widow – sadder, perhaps, but no less of a comic disaster, and still hoping for a boyfriend, or at least a shag.
If the movie, as seems likely, follows its three predecessors to huge box office success, that will not just be thanks to an audience of now middle-aged women. Bridget’s creator, Helen Fielding, said recently that at her book signings “half the audience are gen Zs”. “I’m really happy when 18-year-olds and 20-year-olds talk to me about it and say that they find it comforting to laugh at these things.”
