Bridgerton Is Starting to Look Flat to Me.

 

Bridgeton Is Starting to Look Flat to Me.

The new season of Bridgerton, in which fan-favorite spinster gossip columnist Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) finally gets together with her longtime crush Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton),

 is just as much of a confection as the preceding two (or three, if you count the prequel, Queen Charlotte). The people are gorgeous, the dresses are stunning, the trees and vines are always perfectly manicured and in bloom, and the action unfolds in a London so green and smokeless you’d barely know the story takes place in the Regency period.

All of this glossy smoothness is what we have come to expect from Bridgerton. Its much-debated multiracial casting practices, which have come accompanied by some small (and, to me, unconvincing) degree of world building explaining Black participation in the aristocracy, create a feeling that this world is a little bit to the side of history, largely unanchored in time and space.

 To the show’s credit, that’s part of what makes watching it so pleasurable, and other series, like Apple TV+ offering The Buccaneers, have imitated this frothy-fun vibe, to varying degrees of success.