Netflix’s Bridgerton looks a million bucks: the new must-watch hit
The Regency series is no Downton Abbey: it’s made by Americans with a diverse cast and a healthy dose of swagger.
For a long time the international reputation of British television has rested, fairly or otherwise, on period drama. It has the sweeping vistas, the stately homes, the crunchy gravel drives, the accents and the costumes. It has a ready supply of performers schooled in Shakespearean verse, and shelves full of Austen, Dickens and Thackeray to adapt. All that is a treat for the eyes and ears that Americans, in particular, just can’t resist — they liked watching Downton Abbey so much that they were happy to overlook its clunking storylines for a decade.
What Americans have not attempted, however, is to make a British period drama of their own. Enter Bridgerton, in which a gaudy Yank with big pockets — Netflix — takes fusty old British period drama and gives it some swagger.
Adapted from Julia Quinn’s Regency romance novels, the show follows the adventures of Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) as she negotiates the “marriage mart” in search of a suitable match. So far so Austen-powered. But because Bridgerton is the first fruit of Netflix’s $150 million deal with the US showrunner Shonda Rhimes and her Shondaland production company, things then take a different turn. Obviously Daphne becomes transfixed by the Byronic Simon Basset. Less obviously here this brooding hero is black.
“Shondaland is very good at making sure everyone is invited to the party,” says Regé-Jean Page, who plays Basset. “We’re broadcasting to hundreds of territories in every hue, shape and creed. They need to feel recognised.”
The diverse casting continues throughout: Queen Charlotte is played by Golda Rosheuvel (some historians argue that Charlotte was Britain’s first biracial monarch); Basset’s adopted mother by Adjoa Andoh; and the court and high society are colour-blind. It’s pure Shondaland, just in a new genre.
From her breakout hit Grey’s Anatomy through How to Get Away with Murder and Scandal, Rhimes has practised diversity through cast and crew. Just last weekend the Oscar-winning actress Viola Davis was reported as saying Rhimes has had more impact than any of the more lauded, awarded projects she herself has been in. “We have to understand that what we have given the label of prestige to can’t touch what Shonda created. We talk #diversity and #oscarssowhite and #whatever. But what Shonda has been able to create with How to Get Away with Murder or Grey’s Anatomy is the most culturally diverse entertainment in TV and movies — ever.”
Bridgerton is fast, funny. Most of all Bridgerton is bling. It looks a million bucks, in large part because it cost millions of bucks.
At the beginning of the year I visited the show’s HQ. It was akin to a Regency Costco, the sets bigger, the cuffs puffier, the sideburns more extravagant and the dresses, all of them handmade, numbering in their thousands. When Dynevor was cast as Daphne, the belle of the season, she was taken for a costume fitting. “I remember getting to this huge warehouse,” she says, “and wondering where in it the Bridgerton costumes were being kept. Then I realised the whole warehouse was just for Bridgerton. Everything about it is epic.”
The costumes were designed by Ellen Mirojnick, a Hollywood legend who has dressed films from Basic Instinct to The Greatest Showman. “It’s the largest show I’ve ever done and the most fabulous show I’ve ever done. It’s going to sound staggering, but there are close to 7500 costumes in the first season.”
Mirojnick led a department of 238 people, working for five months. It will be noted that what they created looks very little like the fashions people in 1813 might have worn.
“We used nothing really from history, except the silhouettes: we took great licence. We knew it needed to be fresh, new, saucy, sexy, scandalous. The Featheringtons [the rival family to the Bridgertons] are more like the Kardashians than something in Jane Austen.”
What makes Bridgerton so much fun is that it takes what it needs from history and tosses aside the rest. Its setting is canny — recent TV has mined the Vikings, the Stuart era (Versailles), the Georgians (Harlots, Poldark), the Tudors and Victorians, but Regency England has been largely passed over since Colin Firth got wet in 1995. It’s a curious omission; if period drama is all about presentation, then the Regency (1811-1820) was the acme of preening peacockism. It deserves more than Blackadder the Third.
Chris Van Dusen adapted the series from Quinn’s novels. “The Regency was a crazy time, full of decadence and excess and glamour.” Van Dusen, who worked on Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy, says he wanted Bridgerton to provide “pure escapism”.
With its Gossip Girl-like voiceover from the mysterious scandal-monger Lady Whistledown (Julie Andrews), it certainly does that. It also revels in a level of Versace-fied luxe that a BBC budget simply could not provide.
“Everything on this production looks beautiful,” the production designer Will Hughes-Jones says. “I don’t think there’s a limit to its ambition. What I loved about it was the rope I was given just to go mad and create these massive rooms with all this rich decor.”
And mad he has gone. From the handpainted chinoiserie wallpaper ($3000 a drop) to the 30 giant bespoke rugs, the 18 sets in Uxbridge covering 100,000m2 were like oligarch splendour-porn. A single carpenter spent four months making only fireplaces and windows. For a scene involving one of many glamorous balls, the production made it rain indoors for several days, putting drainage in the floors. It was January, the cast got cold … so they heated the rain.
“At one point we had more people working on this than on Star Wars,” Page says, referring to The Rise of Skywalker, which was shooting near by. “The size of this thing is just insane.”
In the age of TV overload, however, bigness and budget aren’t enough. Bridgerton has to be more than just lavish if it is to go global. “I set out to make the period show I wanted to see,” Van Dusen says.
“One that turns the traditional genre into something new and fresh and relatable and topical.”
His technique has been to take the societal rules that say ladies and gentlemen all had to talk and act a certain way, and then set those in conflict with what people said and did behind closed doors.
“When you watch the show, it’s kind of like reading a romance novel,” he says.
“Things are sexy and dangerous, and it can be a really wild ride.
“There are scenes and moments that are going to make you blush — they made me blush when I was writing them.”
Even the sex is different here: in Bridgerton women take charge. “The most striking thing about life back then was not being able to make your own decision as a woman,” Dynevor says. “There was no career for you — it was all about finding a husband who could look after you.
“The main reason I was so excited about doing the show was I knew that Shonda wouldn’t let the women be without agency, not in life or in the bedroom — that’s not her style.”
It’s another example of how Bridgerton is a show set in Regency England, but made in Shondaland.
“Underneath the beautiful, escapist world we have this running modern commentary on things like class and gender and sex and sexuality and race,” Van Dusen says.
“Issues that I hope audiences can relate to today. Everything on this show is filtered through our own modern lens — and that’s because the show is for a modern audience.”
Bridgerton is streaming on Netflix..