The Netflix period drama has proved a huge hit with audiences since its arrival last month.
Bridgerton season four is captivating audiences after Netflix dropped part two recently and sent the Regency period drama soaring back to the top of the Netflix charts globally, with a whopping 28 million viewers devouring the new episodes. The new series has been adapted from American author Julia Quinn’s third Bridgerton novel, An Offer from a Gentleman, and focuses on second son Benedict Bridgerton (played by Luke Thompson) and his scandalous romance with illegitimate maid Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha).
The new series has all the pop instrumental covers, sumptuous costumes and steamy scenes we’ve come to expect from Bridgerton, however, I’ve got one big gripe: it’s too perfect. Have we finally hit peak Bridgerton? Is it going to be downhill from here on out? The stakes in season four’s love story are far higher than any that have come before it.
Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) and Simon Basset’s (Regé-Jean Page) romance was a poignant one, given the Duke of Hastings’ tragic childhood, but it didn’t have the same gravitas as the cross-class affair between Benedict and Sophie. Meanwhile, Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley) and Anthony Bridgerton’s (Jonathan Bailey) enemies-to-lovers tale simmered with chemistry, but there wasn’t the heightened sense that their romance could be ripped apart at any point.
Similarly, Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) and Colin Bridgerton’s (Luke Newton) friends-to-lovers romance lacked the same intensity. Even if the pair hadn’t made it down the aisle, she might have happily gone off into the sunset with Lord Debling (Sam Phillips) and continued to write Lady Whistledown in secret while becoming even richer.
But Sophie and Benedict are battling with the rigid rules of society and risk becoming outcasts for the sake of their love for one another. There’s something far more weighty and real-world about their romance that makes the previous central Bridgerton couples pale in comparison. Their love is far more intense, fragile and precious because of the obstacles they face.
Added into this, the upstairs/downstairs element breathed new life into the show with a diverse group of characters with very different struggles – there’s a reason fellow period drama phenomenon Downton Abbey is still captivating audiences to this day.
However, Bridgerton is likely to be moving away from this upstairs/downstairs angle as the lens turns to either Eloise Bridgerton (Claudia Jessie) and her romance with Sir Phillip Crane (Chris Fulton) or Francesca Bridgerton (Hannah Dodd) and her love story with Michaela Stirling (Masali Baduza).
Both of these stories very much place the focus back on privileged members of the ton and their struggles albeit with much lower stakes.
I fear this may create a void and we may lose a richness that this brought to Bridgerton.
With season five in the works, my hopes for the future of Bridgerton is that they continue to up the stakes for its characters and make us really root for the central couple in a way we hadn’t done before season four.
This year Bridgerton also brought the grit with its first major death. For the first time in the show, audiences were shown a harsher and sombre side to the period drama.
This loss had a profound impact on each member of the Bridgerton clan in different ways, with Eloise reconsidering her decision to be left on the shelf, while Hyacinth Bridgerton (Florence Hunt) was left feeling the opposite.
She became uncertain over marriage after witnessing the tremendous heartbreak Francesca and her mother Violet Bridgerton (Ruth Gemmell) went through.
The consequences of the death was a masterstroke of genius by the writers and it felt like they had really upped their game for season four.
There’s plenty of grit in Eloise’s novel To Sir Phillip, With Love – which will form the basis of season five or six – involving grief and mental health, so I hope these will be tackled with the weight and sensitivity they deserve.
Francesca and Michaela’s romance will be another one to see play out on screen, particularly since Netflix has gender-swapped Michael Stuhlbargh for Michaela.
How Bridgerton takes on its first same-sex romance will be intriguing, given the amount of scandal Sophie and Benedict’s union nearly caused due to her lowly birthright. Perhaps Francesca and Michaela, too, will face similar challenges.
It’ll be a testament to Bridgerton showrunner Jess Brownell and her writers’ room as to whether they can sustain this high level of storytelling and break new ground with Quinn’s source material. They’ve certainly set the bar high.
Can anything top season four? This author awaits with bated breath.
Bridgerton season 4 is streaming on Netflix now