From the editors
IT WAS DURING the dark days of our first Covid winter that Bridgerton burst onto our screens like a technicolour fantasy, all yellow, pink and blue silk dresses swirling round ballrooms in a disconcerting facsimile of Regency England. Because, while so much of the period backdrop may have been familiar, the Netflix drama played fast and loose with the conventions of costume drama. But what it lacked in historical accuracy, it made up for with sheer bravado. This is history as reimagined by American superproducer Shonda Rhimes, where Queen Charlotte is black, 21st-century pop songs are rearranged for early 19th-century string quartets, and the world is full of beautiful women in feather headbands and handsome young men in tight breeches. It was a dizzying vision that proved irresistible for a world…
