Sexless in the country: Bridgerton’s second season backs away from bonking

There arrived a moment during the third episode of the first season of Netflix’s smash hit, Bridgerton, that featured the handsome Duke (Rege-Jean Page) seductively licking a spoon.

Watching on in a kind of cutlery-induced ecstasy was Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor), no doubt wishing she could switch places with the spoon. Spoiler alert: she soon would.

So revered was that scene that the Duke’s spoon became a celebrity in its own right. There’s even an Instagram account (@thedukesspoon) with more than 20,000 followers, dedicated solely to different shots of the Duke devouring his spoon.

That episode, titled The Art of the Swoon (should’ve gone with The Art of the Spoon, surely?), has become part of Bridgerton folklore.

But the first season of Bridgerton didn’t just tease us with inanimate innuendo; we got more actual sex than we knew what to do with. It took less than three minutes into the first episode before we got our first taste of what was on offer, Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) doing the business against a tree while a footman minds his horse.

From there, it was on for young and old (mostly young), as we became enraptured with Daphne, the Duke and their endless pursuit of pleasure. We had sex in the staircase, sex on the lawn, library sex, and my personal favourite, the Duke’s highly athletic ladder sex.

One of the few scenes from Bridgerton season one where both Daphne and the Duke are fully clothed.Credit: Netflix

All this sex proved to reinforce the adage: sex sells. Season one was a global sensation, drawing in Netflix’s biggest audience at the time, with a record 82 million households worldwide watching the drama within its first month of streaming.

This was later eclipsed by the South Korean show, Squid Game, which attracted 111 million viewers in its first month. Turns out squid sells, too.

This brings us to the highly anticipated second season of Bridgerton and, well, yet another adage: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

We knew going into this season that Rege-Jean Page had decided not to don the Duke’s robes, and instead, the focus would shift to Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), the viscount and eldest son in the Bridgerton family.

But what we didn’t know was that this change would precipitate a far less sexy turn of events.

The focus is on Anthony’s courtship of Edwina (Charithra Chandran), London’s most in-demand debutante. But really, it is Edwina’s older sister, Kate (Simone Ashley), that has caught Anthony’s eye.

Horseplay over foreplay. Bridgerton season two sees a rather restrained courtship between Kate Sharma and Anthony Bridgerton.Credit: Netflix

Where Bridgerton’s first season was a thirst-fest, the second season is snooze-fest, with viewers forced to wait for several episodes before the tension between Anthony and Kate graduates from smouldering glances to red-hot advances.

Which begs the highly appropriate question: what did we come for?

From Downton Abbey to The Gilded Age, the television landscape is flush with period dramas where sex is barely mentioned, let alone carried out against a tree. And even the most staunch Bridgerton fan would be hard-pressed to argue they fell in love with the show because of its sizzling dialogue or riveting plot.

This is basically the closest Anthony and Kate get all season.Credit: Netflix

In an interview with Radio Times, showrunner Chris Van Dusen said, “it was never about quantity [of sex] for us. We use these intimate scenes to tell a story and to push the story forward.”

Yes, but it was about quantity for us, Chris. Bridgerton waltzed into our lives at the end of 2020 (Christmas Day, to be exact), arguably the least sexy year in history. After months of social distancing and hand sanitising, we were primed for a little erotic escapism, and Bridgerton filled that void, so to speak.

Van Dusen also claimed: “We’ve never done a sex scene for the sake of doing a sex scene, and I don’t think we ever will.” A statement so wildly outrageous even Lady Whistledown would be impressed.

It remains to be seen if Bridgerton’s second season will recapture the show’s initial magic, though no doubt people will still tune in out of curiosity. But if you find yourself feeling a little antsy, craving a spoonful of the old Bridgerton, then I suggest you go back to the beginning.

As Lady Whistledown once reminded us: “Desperate times may call for desperate measures.”

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