Stories of high society are endlessly entertaining. The lasting cultural currency of Jane Austen’s novels is proof that readers - time and again - relish her stylish and skilful critique of the British landed gentry in the Regency era. The popularity of successive TV and film adaptations suggests that audiences cannot get enough of the Austen brand. It seems there is something about it - the luxuriousness and languishing of wealthy people, wholly preoccupied with matters of status, reputation and marriage - that delights us.

Set in London in 1813 - the year Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was published - Netflix’s Bridgerton (2021) is the latest production that speaks to the Austen effect. Trending at #1 - on, off and on again - since its premiere on Christmas Day, the show is based on an unabashedly derivative series of historical romance novels by author Julia Quinn. Corresponding to the eight siblings of the tight-knit Bridgerton family, the eight novels bear glossy titles playing on pop-culture references: The Duke and I (2000), The Viscount Who Loved Me (2000), An Offer From a Gentleman (2001), Romancing Mister Bridgerton (2002), To Sir Phillip, With Love (2003), When He Was Wicked (2004), It's In His Kiss (2005), On the Way to the Wedding (2006). The streaming series of Bridgerton dramatises the first of these, following the saga of the beautiful fourth-sister Daphne Bridgerton as she navigates the marriage prospects and scandals of her Regency debutante world. The first episode sees her sparring - in the heated style of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy - with Simon Basset, the handsome but rakish Duke of Hastings who wants nothing to do with marriage. The two enter into a mutually-beneficial arrangement reminiscent of the classic ‘80s film Can’t Buy Me Love (1987), in which girl and boy agree to fake-date in a ruse that promises to further their respective social goals. Notably, this scenario also structures the Netflix teen hit To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018), also based a popular romance novel and signalling the welcome reincarnation and rejuvenation of the rom-com.

While Bridgerton is derivative, it is variously so; it’s a mashup of popular society narratives. Brought to Netflix by executive producer Shonda Rimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal), Bridgerton is a self-reflexive melding of Austen with Gossip Girl, the wildly popular CW series chronicling the lavish and trashy lives of teens on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The Gossip Girl voice (Kristen Bell) narrating the series - as ‘your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite’ - is replicated in the Bridgerton’s heard-but-not-seen Lady Whistledown (read: Whistleblower), an anonymous socialite who seemingly has access to all the best balls and to a printing press. Voiced by the iconic Julie Andrews, Lady Whistledown’s ‘blasts’ take the form of a society newsletter, widely distributed and devoured in the Bridgerton world. The voiceover narration in both series recalls that of Joanne Woodward in Martin Scorcese’s lush 1993 film adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (1920), set in the Gilded Age New York City of the 1870s and recounting the illicit love affair between a conflicted Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) and the exotic Countless Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pheiffer), the cousin of his high society wife, May Welland (Winona Ryder). The resemblance of these popular productions recalls the universal and timeless appeal of gossip as a form of entertainment. As the saying goes, everyone loves a scandal.

The hybrid spirit of Bridgerton is captured in its diverse casting of Black actors in lead and supporting roles. Simon Bassett is played by Zimbabwean-English actor Regé-Jean Page, and the role of Queen Charlotte - playfully introduced as ‘the queen’ - is played by Guyanese-British actress Golda Rosheuvel. The loving wife of ‘Mad’ King George III, Queen Charlotte is thought to be Britain's first Black queen. Andrea Park recounts in Marie Claire that ‘historians believe that the royal, born Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1744, did indeed descend from African ancestry’, bringing colour to The Royal Family as the grandmother of Queen Victoria. Shondaland’s clever accentuation of this history in their conception of Bridgerton is undoubtedly fuelling its wild popularity, as the series is striking while the iron of Black Lives Matter is hot. Oddly this post-racial imagining of the Regency era has the effect of highlighting the other glaring inequalities that remain. The young women are still desperate for marriage and nothing without that prospect, and the harsh classism of the British caste system is somehow made even more grotesque by the levelling of the races. Yet Bridgerton handles these serious concerns by ignoring them completely, and the progressiveness of that haughtiness just might be the crux of the zeitgeist.

Next Installment: The Bridgerton Allure - Part 2: The Splendour