(That might sound daunting, but for the romance genre, a series of that size is fairly common.) The series, like most historical romances, sets itself within a loose version of the Regency period - that particular moment of pre-industrial 19th-century Britain when London aristocracy was rich and bored enough to revolve around an annual “season” of nightly parties and events. Bridgerton is a typical Regency romance, with a few bulletproof tropes working in its favorīridgerton is based on romance veteran Julia Quinn’s epic eight-part romance novel series of the same name. It all makes for a compulsively snackable marathon, but it’s not easy to digest in the end. It pivots around deeply shallow characters, conniving matchmakers, and turgid sex scenes - and even includes a distressing onscreen rape that’s never really addressed.

It even utilizes two of the most irresistible plots in romance history: fake dating and a marriage of convenience.īut Bridgerton’s story of two neighboring London families and the blossoming romance between a debutante and a mysterious duke ultimately contains more window dressing than substance. Written by Shondaland veteran Chris Van Dusen ( Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy), Bridgerton’s eight episodes fly by, and its Regency-era setting is easy to get lost in. That’s not to say that I didn’t inhale the entire first season anyway. But instead of filling that opulent, 19th-century setting with true passion and heart, the show comes off like many of the aristocrats it’s skewering: soulless and vapid.

But now that it’s actually gone ahead and made one, I’ve found that I have to eat my words.īridgerton, Shonda Rimes’s first collaboration with Netflix, promises a story of upper-crust debutantes with secrets and their fight to marry well in Regency London. As a huge fan of historical romance, I once longed for Netflix to make a lush, extravagant, twisty series in the vein of the books I loved.

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