‘Simply marvellous’: Bridgerton is back and it’s never looked better

Bridgerton ★★★★
Netflix

Will Bridgerton still be as good without Rege-Jean Page? That’s what fans will be asking as they sit down to watch the much-anticipated second season. Five minutes later they’ll be asking “Rege-Jean who?”

Page became the internet’s new crush 15 months ago when his character, 19th-century nobleman Simon Basset, began a will-they-won’t-they dance with eldest Bridgerton girl Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) and Shonda Rhimes’s Shondaland began its oddly wonderful annexation of Regency England.

Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley) proves a match for Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) in season two of Bridgerton.Credit: Liam Daniel/Netflix

Now with Basset gone and Daphne pushed to the periphery early in the new season, the soapy costume romance has never looked stronger. Characters old and new almost burst with vim, vigour, machination and comedic foible in every corner.

First into the breach is second Bridgerton sister Eloise (Claudia Jessie), a wonderfully feisty proto-feminist who is mortified at having to take part in theannual high-society matchmaking circus presided over by Queen Charlotte (the hugely entertaining Golda Rosheuvel).

That storyline looks like a real winner, but it’s overtaken by that of eldest Bridgerton boy Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), who has suddenly decided that he should take a wife. He even has a list of the necessary attributes: “Tolerable. Dutiful. Suitable enough hips for childbearing. And at least half a brain. And that last part is not so much a requirement, but a preference, in fact.”

Adjoa Andoh as Lady Danbury and Golda Rosheuvel as Queen Charlotte.Credit: Liam Daniel/Netflix

It’s clear that the old “Rake with a capital ‘R’” (as Anthony is characterised here) is doing this for purely pragmatic purposes. In a gruelling series of dates in between trips to brothels, he employs a style of blunt interrogation.

Then he meets a woman he’s actually smitten with - and who has his measure on every level. It’s Kate Sharma (Sex Education’s Simone Ashley), who has just arrived from Bombay to escort her younger sister, Edwina (Charithra Chandran), through the ordeal of matchmaking season.

What are the odds that once Kate has given him short shrift (“Your character is as deficient as your horsemanship”), Anthony will move on to wooing young Edwina? Place your bets now.

This season seems to have cut back on the Gossip Girl angle; there’s not much of Julie Andrews’ delightfully arch narration as Lady Whistledown early on. Perhaps that’s because we now know who the real Lady Whistledown is and we’re busy watching her scurrying about trying to keep her secret - even as it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep.

The events of season two cast Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) in a new light.Credit: Liam Daniel/Netflix

One of Bridgerton’s many strengths is its abundance of skilled actors who can play the comedic material almost completely straight, while also keeping it highly amusing. Bailey and Jessie certainly can, and they’re matched by the ever-marvellous Polly Walker as Baroness Featherington, matriarch of the Bridgertons’ financially straitened friends down the street, and Derry Girls star Nicola Coughlan as Penelope, the youngest Featherington daughter who the Baroness keeps imprisoned in dresses that range in colour from sunflower yellow to ... well ... egg yolk.

Another strength is in the aplomb with which series creator and Shondaland veteran Chris Van Dusen (Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal) harnesses and balances a host of characters and storylines from Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton novels.

There’s also depth to the characters. As we see in a surprisingly affecting episode early on this season, Anthony isn’t really a cad, a bounder and a stuffed shirt. He’s been emotionally cauterised by horrendous family trauma and onerous responsibilities inherited at an early age - a backstory that casts things in an altogether different light.

The assiduous diversity of the casting is striking at times, especially in scenes in which royalty and aristocracy hobnob in royal palaces. It adds a pleasing element of racial harmony to the romantic fantasy and gives the brilliant Adjoa Andoh the chance to shine in a central role as the sharp-tongued Lady Danbury.

Needless to say, the costumes, set design and flower arrangements are also spectacular, as is one magical shot of a London lit by sunset with St Paul’s at the centre of a low-rise, spire-piked metropolis.

Simply marvellous, and absolute catnip for fans.

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