When it comes to true love, somehow lust gets the short shrift on screen. Grand passion makes sex scenes low key or even redundant, rendering it all about the look, the smile, the repartee, the wit. By the time that accidental brush of hands happens – which renders the hero, heroine and us, the readers and audiences, breathless – we are all primed to play harps.
Romances do work bodily urgency into the narrative, but in slow motion, in soft focus, in pastels, so that one sighs misty-eyed. The fated quality of the alliance reigns supreme, making it more mystical than physical. Then along comes Bridgerton, heaving its bosom and panting heavily, setting our TV sets on fire.
Prim and pious people clothed from top to toe in gloves and stockings are suddenly bare-bottomed and French kissing. It would appear marriage is just a shortcut to the boudoir, an excuse for aerobic mating. Every few scenes, they are going at it with such gusto and choreographed moans that it is impossible to look away.
On a ladder, on a stairway, against a tree, on this bed and that floor are where you will find the couples in this serial. Stripping with such spectacular suddenness that there is barely time to shoo out the under-aged and any elderly members prone to heart attacks. This is a period drama with both period and drama in it. The scene where Daphne learns she is not pregnant after all comes at you red and raw. And how she tries to be with child is another soft porn story altogether.
Of course, we are no prudes. People hook up all the time; we are happy to watch two people meet and begin their relationship bed backwards. In rom coms where desire takes centre-stage, sex is the start to the spiritual; we know this casual couple may be in it only for fun, but will soon discover they are soul mates. We are in the room when Mr Right proposes to Ms Right.
But Bridgerton takes us back in time only to tell us that the sex was perhaps better in the days of yore, that there was nothing fuddy duddy about our dada dadi. From the gravity-defying cleavage served on lace-trimmed trays, to the tight corset that leaves shoulders bleeding, it is wink, wink, nudge nudge all the way.
Victorian debauchery meets 21st century porn? Surely it is more than that. The title itself suggests a matrilineal mood, naming as it does the heroine’s family, and there is a fierce anti-racist effort in the casting and a very organic settling into it. It is just that the frequency with which nudity bursts upon us has many swooning. As the Daily Mail went, ‘But goodness, it’s filthy. Forget Bridgerton; Bonkerton would be more apt.’
A noble attempt by Netflix to fix libidos that nosedived March onwards, Bridgerton drops its knickers gamely enough. With sex the first season’s go-to exercise, a hijacked year seems to be getting back in the saddle.
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