Bridgerton Season 4: Love, Sex and Cliches

Bridgerton Season 4, Part 1 | Executive Producer: Shonda Rhimes | Cast: Luke Thompson, Yerin Ha, Ruth Gemmel | English | Netflix

Reformed rakes make the best husbands, says one mama to her daughter. Yes, we’ve watched enough Bridgerton to know this. There are more tropes familiar to consum­ers of period romances: the hand flex, the first dance, the man’s wet shirt and in R-rated versions, steamy sex. Season 4 of Bridgerton has all this and more. It focuses on the second brother, Benedict (Luke Thompson, who is aiming for Jonathan Bailey’s dream­boat status), who is something of a free spirit.

He is now committed to Sophie Baek (Australian-Korean actor Yerin Ha) even though he thinks she is a maid. Since this is a Cinderella story, we know that she was denied her inheritance by her wicked stepmama. Championing diversity has been a big part of showrunner Shonda Rhimes’s playbook, updating Julia Quinn’s White Regency novels. Yearning and waiting is embedded in Bridgerton, one reason it works so well in the age of instant gratification.

None of the Bridgerton boys get the women of their dreams immediately. They all must do some grovelling to earn their spurs, which is a tale as old as Pride and Prejudice. The settings are delicious, the actors are good looking and the dialogues are edible. As for the unfor­tunate scene in where Benedict thinks he is generous in asking Sophie to be his mis­tress (spoiler alert), I am sure that the season’s upcoming second half will resolve all differences between the lovers.