Weekend Watch: Bridgerton Season 2
The Regency romp returns
Image Credit: Netflix
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Bridgerton returns with less sexy time and more longing looks. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite
Bridgerton was one of those pandemic sensation shows. The adaptation of Julia Quinn’s historical romance novels offered a sexy blend of heaving bosoms, hunky blokes, complicated backgrounds, refreshingly colour-blind casting choices and Julie Andrews providing piquant voice-over as the mysterious Lady Whistledown, an unknown (unless you’d read the books) gossip monger whose musings are like the twitter of their day (except accurate).
It slightly shocked fans of the books by pushing the sex front and centre, going full pelt at the racy side of things as Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) sparred and flirted with Simon Basset (show breakout Regé-Jean Page), never intending to fall for the arrogant, troubled Duke. But, in keeping with any Jane Austen-alike story, they naturally ended up in love and then married, bonking all the way to the altar (even if he didn’t want kids).
Season 2 sees the focus on the Bridgerton family side switching to Daphne’s brother Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), the eldest child burdened with the responsibility of marrying well. A playboy who’d rather sleep around, he’s uncomfortable with his newly curtailed status, but throws himself into finding a wife. The best option would appear to be that season’s “Diamond”, young Edwina Sharma (Charithra Chandran) who has arrived in England from India and is immediately the talk of the social scene.
Trouble is, Anthony almost immediately has love/hate chemistry with Edwina’s older sister Kate (Simone Ashley) a “spinster” at the ripe old age of 26 who has devoted her life to preparing her younger sibling for this big social debut. Whip-smart and accomplished, she’s also perfectly adept at the sort of huntin’ and shootin’ that pulls Anthony’s trigger (stop sniggering in the back there) and makes for a serious love triangle.
Elsewhere, there are the continued tribulations of the Featherington family, led by imperious but impulsive matriarch Lady Portia (Polly Walker, a past master at this sort of character). Following the death of patriarch Archibald (Ben Miller) last season, they’re scrambling to shore up their own finances, a situation not helped by the arrival of Jack (Rupert Young), who has inherited the estate and has big plans for it.
With Daphne reduced to a cameo character and Simon left at home (thanks to Page striding off through all the doors that his Bridgerton role opened), this is firmly Anthony’s story with a side of Featherington action (especially since – spoiler alert if you’ve not seen the first season, or, as mentioned, read the books, Nicola Coughlin’s Penelope was revealed to be Lady Whistledown).
What’s different this year is the sex factor – in that it’s almost completely absent compared to the first run. While the Shondaland team leaned into the boddice-ripping, here the tone is much closer to the books’ deployment of longing and lusting from afar. Bailey and Ashley have particularly potent chemistry as they constantly claim to loathe each other before realising that they’re a near perfect match.
The highlights, though, truly come from the side-lines: Claudia Jessie remains a treat to watch as the sarcastic Eloise Bridgerton, thoroughly fed up with the whole social scene and exploring the nascent women’s rights movement, while Coughlin is endlessly watchable as Penelope.
While not all the writing or performances are up to their standards, the second season becomes more watchable than the first, unless your focus was on heaving naked bodies. Everything else is present and correct, including pop and rock hits performed by string quartets, the cutting wit of Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel), and Andrews back in the voice booth. The daddy issues, meanwhile, are carried this time by Anthony, as flashbacks explore his father’s death and the impact on his family. Let’s just say that Nicolas Cage would have sympathy for the Bridgerton family.
I can’t say I paid all that much attention to the first season (which was mostly on in the house while I worked), but Season 2 proved to be, if anything, more entertaining.
Bridgerton Season 2 is on Netflix now.