‘Bridgerton’ Used to Be All About Sex. It Got Better By Tackling Class

When Bridgerton premiered in December 2020, the height of the Covid-19 TV fishbowl, the Regency-era romance captivated viewers with its fantasy masquerade balls, corsets, and bodice-ripping sex. Based on the bestselling novels from author Julia Quinn, the Netflix series, now in its fourth season, follows the titular Bridgerton family and its eight children’s journeys through London’s “marriage mart.” It’s a world full of intrigue, gossip, and lust. 

But its panting, thrusting allure dimmed over time. With the show’s third season, audience fatigue seemed to set in. Why else would the creative team have chosen to follow not one but two couples’ stories in Season Three, the friends-to-lovers ballad of Colin (Luke Newton) and Penelope (Nicola Coughlan) and Francesca (Hannah Dodd) and John Stirling’s (Victor Alli) tale of love-at-first-sight? 

With the sexy newcomer Heated Rivalry now sucking up all the romance-TV oxygen, Part 1 of Bridgerton Season Four arrived last week with something to prove. And this time out, it’s ably defended its crown. This season’s lovers, Benedict (Luke Thompson) and Sophie (Yerin Ha), bring as much heartfelt drama to the proceedings as Season Two’s Anthony (Jonathan Bailey) and Kate (Simone Ashley). But the answer to the show’s woes, counterintuitively, wasn’t hotter sex — it lies in finally exploring the Regency world’s lower classes. 

Bridgerton Season Four takes its main love story from Quinn’s 2001 novel An Offer From a Gentleman, which follows the Cinderella tale of Benedict and Sophie. As the second-eldest Bridgerton son, Benedict has all of his siblings’ charm but none of the married respect the rest of them command. Sophie, meanwhile, is a maid at Penwood House. After a chance encounter with a mysterious lady in silver at a masquerade ball, Benedict realizes he might actually believe in love. He soon grows enamored with Sophie, not realizing the mystery woman and his budding love interest are the same person. He and Sophie have an undeniable connection, but anything more than a sexual relationship would go against every established rule of society. Rich men can have poor mistresses — but they can’t have poor wives. 

Since Season Four’s leading lady spends most of her time onscreen doing her job while the titled lords around her sip claret and complain, a large portion of these four episodes is spent immersed in the daily lives of Bridgerton’s previously unexplored working class. While past seasons of the show have introduced governesses and household managers, those characters have always remained auxiliary to Bridgerton’s central love stories. Unlike other period dramas like The Gilded Age, Downton Abbey, or Apple TV’s Edith Wharton drama The Buccaneers, Bridgerton has consistently shied away from any real acknowledgement of class. Even the expanded screen time of working-class couple Will (Martins Imhangbe) and Alice Mondrich (Emma Naomi) in Season Three came with an out-of-the-blue change in status: An estranged great aunt dies and leaves the Mondrichs’ son as the sole heir to an estate, taking the couple from poor bar owners to suddenly wealthy aristocrats with none of the connection to their former life. 

But Season Four takes viewers to lower-class settings like the bars where scullery maids and footmen relax, the markets where house staff shop, even the secret drawing rooms where servants eat their breakfast and discuss town gossip. Because these are the people who are most often ignored by society, they’re the ones who actually not just the correct details of the latest town gossip but know which lady is a loving employer and who’s a cruel taskmaster. The people Sophie works with are her family — more than any actual blood relation — and that acknowledgement gives the friendships in this usually airy show grounding and depth. 

The focus on class also strengthens this season’s central love story. While past seasons of Bridgerton have all included some kind of will-they-won’t-they tension on their main characters’ paths to love, the class divide gives Season Four actual stakes. Unlike the couples in past seasons, when Benedict and Sophie consider a life together, it is one that would see them both cast out of society completely. Any child they had would be kept separate from the ton; Benedict could rarely see his family again; and Sophie would be right back in the situation she was desperate to escape. The decision Benedict and Sophie make could change their lives — or ruin them — forever. 

Bridgerton, of course, has never been focused on historical accuracy. The show has reveled in its intentionally anachronistic music, casting, and costume choices. And not every romance needs to be grounded in reality. Sometimes the last thing a bodice-ripper needs is a reminder that the characters onscreen think leeching is a helpful medical treatment or that disagreements can only be handled with dueling pistols. 

But you can’t strip a story of everything that makes it interesting and expect it to hit in the same way. By ignoring class as a factor in its characters’ lives, Bridgerton has often sanded away much of the underlying friction between them — and done the couples’ love stories a disservice in the process. You’d never see a Cinderella retelling where she ditches the fairy godmother and buys the gown and a ticket to the ball with her fantasy AmEx. Period dramas need some accuracy, or at least acknowledgement of societal realities, in order for their fantastical elements to succeed. Thankfully Bridgerton figured that out before it was too late.

From Rolling Stone US.