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Highly teased and hard to bear

The Netflix series “Bridgerton” was pure escapism. The second season fails not only because of its emancipatory ambitions, but also because of the romance.

The first season of costume tearjerker Bridgerton was a real lockdown phenomenon. When it released on Christmas 2020, the Christmas many skipped for the first time, the series apparently offered the distraction many were looking for: into a scandalous London ball season in 1813. According to Netflix, the show broke from Shonda Rhimes’ production house Shondaland set the audience record with 82 million households watching in the first four weeks. To date, Bridgerton is the second highest-grossing Netflix series of all time , behind Squid Game . This could be due to the fuss surrounding the diverse casthave been done; It goes without saying that high-ranking aristocrats, including the Queen, are also cast with black actresses and actors. Or maybe simply because many people have switched on the Regency kitsch for hate-watching .

Because Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) and Simon Besset (Regé-Jean Page) invited when they strolled through a Disneyland London, often accompanied by an off-screen voice, the ominous gossip reporter Lady Whistledown, in her coveted postils it was described in detail how scandalous this statement or those looks had been again.

So now season two appears, in which further Bridgerton offspring from the novel by Julia Quinn are processed. After his sister Daphne lives happily with her duke, Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), the Bridgerton’s eldest son, is looking for a bride this season. However, he immediately makes it clear that he is not looking for love, but above all for a woman with a “fertile pelvis”, noble manners and at least an “acceptable intellect”.

He quickly has one candidate in mind: Edwina Sharma (Charithra Chandran), beautiful, educated, loyal – and named “Jewel” by the Queen, the most desirable bachelorette of the season. Her sister Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley) is particularly happy about the latter, who has traveled from India with Edwina and her mother to find a bridegroom for her little sister in polite English society. Unlike her sister, Kate is determined not to marry, a woman who hunts and rides alone – and the attraction between her and Anthony is obvious. Even if they can’t stand each other at first. But above all, Kate wants to marry off her sister, for her happiness in life and for reasons that shouldn’t be spoiled here. And so begins something like a love triangle,

Some things have become better than in the first season: Above all, the two main characters, Kate and Anthony, are not as annoying as the always trying elfish Daphne and her exaggeratedly icy Duke Simon. Kate and Anthony even share a similar story, both having to take on responsibility for the family early on after the death of their father. That’s a lot of substance for romance by Bridgerton’s standards, given that Simon and Daphne shared their “passion” above all else. As a result, season one was so full of sex scenes that lists circulated on Instagram of episodes that were safe to watch with parents and others that might be awkward. So few ended up on the first list that eventually half episodes were included. 

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