Bridgerton

The costumes are beautiful. The actors are on point. It's a show that knows exactly what it is, but beautifully achieves that while also still layering in some surprises and modern twists. Turn your nose up at it, if you like. But you'll miss out on some of the year's most enjoyable television yet.

The series somehow manages to feel both comfortably familiar and completely brand new—an effervescent, romantic romp that centers the female-gaze and spirit in a world that too often views women as little more than objects. Its cast is effortlessly diverse. ... But it is also a story of family and friendship where every plot twist and relationship shift manages to feel completely and thoroughly earned.

Ultimately what makes Bridgerton such a gem is its adoration of the historic romance genre. The attention to detail in this show doesn’t cater to fussy historic accuracy, but the way the romance genre drowns readers in fantasy. Bridgerton is a swoon-inducing treat that will leave you hot, bothered, and begging for more.

Beguiling. ... Bridgerton’s diversity backstory feels warm yet half-baked ... But because it’s happening in a genre that always papers over some realities, I don’t really mind. Bridgerton’s end result is a heady cloud of pleasure and true love set in an idealized, more inclusive milieu. At a time when I’m longing to escape the real world, few fantasies are more inviting.

That melodramatic life of leisure, empire waistlines and the "marriage market" is brought to the screen with exquisite detail in Netflix's resplendent new drama.

“Bridgerton” is a blast, an addictive coiffured period romance that turns downright randy while dancing deftly with racism and misogyny.

Bridgerton, it seems, is a wonderful diversion for those who love Pride & Prejudice but wish it had more stairway sex. ... For all of the misery we endured in 2020, at least it is the year that Shondaland successfully dragged the period romance into the modern age.

This is a series which wears its charms on its sleeve from the start and thus has no shame about its desire to beguile and bewitch viewers. It succeeds thanks to creator Chris Van Dusen’s understanding of the material and some smart, spritely scripts from a young female-led writing room.

This new Shondaland smash, her first for Netflix, is set in 1813 London and features color-blind casting, a mega-sexy star in Rege-Jean Page and enough ravishing romance to take your mind off the latest Covid surge. Get ready to swoon.

It’s like “Dickinson,” but better, and it’s like “The Great,” but not as good.

It’s a juicy show that will get you hard and make you cry—a real capturing of life under lockdown—while serving up a cast so stacked with attractive actors that by the time storied British hottie Freddie Stroma shows up, he starts to look almost plain. Let’s all just be grateful.

The various marriage plots and melodramas feel familiar (and, in the season’s back half, drawn-out), and the gestures at upstairs-downstairs class-consciousness are underdeveloped. But what works here is fizzy and fun enough that you may not care. Page is magnetic. ... Dynevor likewise balances Daphne’s romanticism and independent-mindedness, and the bow-chicka-wow-wow physical chemistry between the two leads is a character in itself. ... The old-newness of “Bridgerton” is a kind of statement in itself.

“Bridgerton” is more fun, perceptive and affecting than the shorthand description makes it sound. The first episode is a bit slow and unfocused, but after that, the characters emerge as complex, and the show takes flight.

Nobody’s going to mistake Bridgerton for Austen, but it hardly matters. It looks great, rattles along, and doesn’t ask too much of the exhausted, depressed, locked-down Christmas viewer. A shiny little stocking filler.

The series truly dazzles because of its smart weaving of feminist critique throughout its marriage plot, which doesn't just sit atop the proceedings but shapes the storylines themselves. A sex-positive bodice-ripper should be a redundancy… but Bridgerton points up how little of that genre we actually get.

Historians and Jane Austen purists may take offense, but this well crafted, escapist drama — where orchestras play covers of Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish hits — is not meant for them.

Bridgerton is a satisfying inversion of tropes, a bonfire of our period-drama vanities. That’s about all the insight it delivers—but this holiday season, eight hours of getting the hell out of the real world is a precious gift indeed.

Daphne and Simon circle each other throughout the series with eyes equally wary and full of longing, which is great fun to watch unfold. But “Bridgerton” reveals its true strengths once it allows them to explicitly acknowledge what so many period romances of this ilk tend to dodge, namely that these characters don’t just want to marry: they want to have sex. ... “Bridgerton” demonstrates a keen and refreshing understanding of all the ways in which sex can complicate and enrich love — even, or maybe even especially, when its characters don’t.

For the time being, the fizzy fun and exuberant look of the series wins audiences over despite the narrative overcomplexity, even for those who can’t tell the three eldest good-looking twenty-something brunette white guy Bridgerton brothers apart for the first several episodes.

Bridgerton has a soapy, compelling way about it.

Twisty romance plays out against a busy swirl of subplots. [4 - 17 Jan 2021, p.6]

While it may not qualify as an instant classic, or even very good, it is good enough to smooth out the raggedy ending of 2020. All the graces and visual splendor one expects of some dream version of 19th century England seduces the eye on the front end, but beneath this show's heaving decolletage beats the heart of "Scandal" and lust of "Grey's Anatomy."

It’s more like soapier, sexier Jane Austen-lite that would benefit from a dash more wit.

Enjoyably rambunctious (if a tad overblown) period drama. ... Whenever the series starts to drag (and it does do that, with episodes that are often too long and subplots that dawdle around), the show cranks up some other aspect to keep viewers interested — the vivid costumes, the palatial surroundings, the name-that-tune recognition game when a chamber orchestra segues into classically arranged takes on modern hits (Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande).

This is a handsome, lavish romance that will appeal to a large audience, but it's also painstakingly insubstantial.

Show every sign of having watched one too many episodes of Downton Abbey. ... I felt by the end of the first episode it had delighted me with its presence long enough, and yet … and yet … Was there not, after all, room for just one more? And, perhaps, another after that?

My empty, end-of-the-year brain was well served by the burlesque of selfish viscounts, conniving ladies of the house, and enterprising modistes. Less pleasurable were certain attempts at seriousness. ... The grafting of contemporary politics onto the period piece feels extraneous and vague. Maybe this interracial-love fetish would have jelled better in the Obama era.

As opening bids go, however, Bridgerton plays a weak hand, turning Julia Quinn's novels about a 19th-century London family into a handsome but tedious snooze -- think "Masterpiece Theater," only with more sex and nudity.

Van Dusen and his team seem to bite off more than they can chew by giving each of their characters, brought to life by a charming cast, a hefty storyline that in some cases is flayed by the end of the season. That's compounded by its melodrama, which may attract those with a specific palate for this kind of fare, like Downton Abbey and The Crown, even with its flaws, but others may not be able to get past its foibles to enjoy the operatic escapades. Bridgerton is ultimately extravagantly decent.

The result is an inconsistently paced effort that ultimately reveals itself as an entirely predictable “Pride and Prejudice” retread. “Bridgerton” is amusing enough and will scratch a certain thirsty itch, but its themes about love, marriage, and class aren’t quite as progressive as it would like to think.

It’s a fun show, for a while at least; the escapism quotient is high, especially at the end of a year without parties or gowns or skin-to-skin contact between people who don’t already share a bathroom. And it’s exciting to see Shondaland, which spent so many years chronicling the adventures of 21st-century professional superwomen, play around in a genre where feminist empowerment is harder to come by. If only the writing matched the production values.

Considering the money that must have been spent on it, “Bridgerton” should be better. It has all the trappings of a 1980s network miniseries but none of its sizzle. More humor -- and an appearance by Andrews -- would help immensely.