Bridgerton returns for its fourth season, and the show continues to lean into its American conventions despite its Regency England setting. Based on books by an American author, created by an American writer, and broadcast by an American streamer, the series has been described as the most American show on television. The new season focuses on Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson), the debonair second son, whose ambivalence towards social mores is challenged when he meets a mysterious lady at a masquerade ball.
The lady is Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha), the eldest daughter of the late Lord Penwood, who has been relegated to servant status by her stepmother, Lady Penwood (Katie Leung). The storyline follows a Cinderella-like plot, with Sophie having two pampered stepsisters. The show's formula of reforming a rake into a devoted husband continues, as Benedict's libertine bisexuality gives way to monogamy.
Critics have noted that the show distills plotlines from classic novels and fairy tales, generating consistent perfect facial bone structure and rendering everything in lurid, over-saturated colour. Some have described it as the closest a human could come to creating an AI slop Regency romance. Despite this, the season remains perfectly enjoyable, with Thompson and Ha making effective leads, even if Ha's character is impossibly perfect and her accent migrates between England and Australia.
The romance is not as racy as previous seasons, but Bridgerton's sensibility has always been more tell than show. The show's creators know what their audience wants – a dashing aristocrat, a seemingly impossible love story, and period trappings – and they deliver. The series is a fantasy product of Anglophile Americans' fascination with the British class system, yet it has become the most important piece of original IP for Netflix since the end of Stranger Things.
Despite the cynicism it arouses, the latest season of Bridgerton is reliably pleasant to watch, deploying its familiar formula for a fourth time and achieving much the same result: a sexy American soap opera in bonnets and bodices.
