Bridgerton Season 2. Concluding thoughts…

Well, this was fairly neat. Kate’s life-threatening head injury could be cured with bed rest apparently. She’s as right as rain. The troublesome con-man cousin has been dispatched without ruining the family, thanks to some behind the scenes matriarchal strategizing that we only get wind of once it is triumphantly complete. Edwina will surely marry someone cos she’s lovely.

Benedict should keep painting though. We need some arty scenes. He should swallow his pride re. his brother’s Royal Academy sponsorship.

The wrecked relationship is that between Eloise and Penelope. Eloise, the best character in the series, is having trouble processing the idea of being vilified in the press as a means of being protected from the Queen. In a double whammy of an evening for Penelope, she also discovers that Colin completely disavows (in front of his friends) any prospect of a romantic attachment with her.

Yet Lady Whistledown must write. This is the thing that she does, and Penelope is very keen at the end to assert that the production of a scandal sheet is an actual thing that she as an actual person has done – and which Eloisa has not – for all of Eloisa’s talk of self actualisation. She must write, if Julia Andrews’ voice is to be heard.

Halfway through the first series, the beginnings of an explanation for Aristocratic London’s ethnic diversity was offered. This explanation was soon abandoned and has not been re-attempted and should be not again. This is not a Regency drama but a drama about what the twenty-first century wants from a Regency setting. Again I’m reminded of the unsuccessful Proustian time-travel romcom Somewhere in Time starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. A young man from 1980 can think himself back in 1912 by power of focused mental immersion. As soon as he finds a 1970s coin in his pocket, his 1912 existence dissolves. Likewise, any attempt to interrogate the logical basis of this version of the 1810s will result in Bridgerton’s explosion.

Bridgerton is not just unhistorical but ahistorical. Nothing of any historical/political importance is ever discussed. The idea that ladies did not discuss politics in the Regency period is untrue, of course. Society hostesses like Lady Danbury would have been either Whig or Tory and would have been well informed alert regarding subtle shifts in party-political fortunes. Then, again, none of the gentlemen have any interest in politics either – local, national or geopolitical. You might have thought that at least once over brandy and billiards the issue of what Napoleon was up to might have come up? But no. These peers are never in the House of Peers. I have no idea who is meant to be running the country, because the “ton” are not.

Primogeniture means that younger brothers need to be provided for in a variety of ways. That is – unless the Bridgertons are planning to live together forever and ever and ever in the same house, like the Ewings in Dallas. None of the Bridgertons considers a military career – presumably because this would burst the ton bubble and ensure some reference to huge battles would have to be made. None of the Bridgertons considers a career in the Church. Not sexy, we assume.

These questions are not asked because they cannot be asked without the Bridgerton bubble being burst. Eloisa’s radicalism cannot be permitted to do what all radicals must definitionally do – which is to ask questions about who is running the country and how and why? The world of Bridgerton has to exist out of time and out of the possibility of change, a world which somehow persists without effort or strain.

The politics of the show are not about the Regency ton at all, but rather about 21st century Netflix viewers. It’s a drama about the version of the Regency that we want – in the here and the now. It’s not an opportunity to learn from the past, but rather an occasion to consider our own sartorial preferences. It’s twenty-first century drama about selling the 1810s. The Bridgertons are not on trial. We are.