From the beginning, “Bridgerton” has been buoyed by the strength of its casting. Fans fell head over heels for Phoebe Dynevor and Regé-Jean Page’s Season 1 love story not just because it was smolder-heavy bodice-ripping fare with an egalitarian twist, but also because the actors truly seemed to embody the characters. That was important, not just because so much of the audience was familiar with the Julia Quinn series that made up the source material, but because it’s simply no fun to watch someone fall in love with a bad actor.
Had “Bridgerton” cast a hot-but-wooden hunk as Viscount Anthony Bridgerton instead of Jonathan Bailey, watching him hem and haw over Simone Ashley ’s Kate Sharma in Season 2 would have felt like a chore. Instead, Bailey and Ashley — and almost every other on-screen face in “Bridgerton” — made the show feel light and buoyant, bubbly and rich. It’s the perfect Netflix original: Spicy but not salacious, bound to cause conversation and oh-so-bingeable.
And luckily, back in 2020 when the show cast Luke Thompson as Benedict Bridgerton — the series’ slightly mischievous, free-spirited second son — they did a bang up job. As Benedict, Thompson has always seemed like the joyfully kind heart of the series, the sibling you’d call if you somehow ended up in the clink or needed to tie one on after a hard breakup. As a viewer, you want to see him thrive — whether as an artist or a lover — and so hearing that Season 4 would be Benedict’s time to shine always felt like a good thing.
The latest season is based on the third book from the “Bridgerton” series, “An Offer From A Gentleman,” which is essentially a Cinderella story with a slightly salacious twist. After meeting and quickly falling for a young woman in silver at a masquerade ball, Benedict goes searching for her. What he doesn’t realize is that the woman he thought was some mysterious socialite is actually a servant — Sophie Beckett in the books but Sophie Baek in the series — who bluffed her way into the ball and very much doesn’t want to be found out, no matter how much of a connection she felt with the Bridgerton brother. See, she’s the illegitimate daughter of an Earl as well as a badly overworked maid in the house of her (evil) step-mother, Araminta. And while love might know no class boundaries in 2026, in Georgian England, such a dalliance would simply never work out.
But because “Bridgerton” is a regency romance and a bit of a fairy tale, Benedict and Sophie are of course drawn together again, as our oft-drunk hero thwarts some violence directed at Sophie at a society home she happens to be working at out in the country. (In the books, the reunion happens two years after the ball, but on-screen the timeline is a little more fuzzy.) The two flee the country home, with Sophie recognizing Benedict but saying nothing and Benedict somehow failing to understand who Sophie is, which you have to just accept with a sort of Superman-as-Clark-Kent sized grain of salt.
The couple is waylaid at Benedict’s country home after a rainstorm and an illness and — surprise! — begin to fall for one another. Benedict loves Sophie’s joie de vivre and Sophie loves Benedict’s kindness and freedom. They don’t act on it while they’re in the country, for the most part (though there is a scene by a swimming hole in which Sophie stumbles upon a bathing Benedict that fans from the book will love to see) but the spark is undeniable. And though both are admonished to keep their distance from the other by Benedict’s housekeeper Mrs. Crabtree, who’s keenly aware of both the imbalance of power between a master and a maid and what would happen if even a rumor of Sophie’s impropriety got out, the pull seems to be too strong. When Benedict lands Sophie a job at his mother’s home (much to her dismay), the two are thrust together time and time again, with proximity only seeming to kindle their building fire.
It all comes to a head in Episode 4, when an in-love but misguided Benedict seeks out Sophie one night. After the two (finally!) engage in some hot “against the wall” makeout action, Benedict lays on the charm and professes his admiration, only to ask Sophie not to be his wife but his mistress. It lands about as well as you’d expect, given her background, and the pair step away from each other, stricken. And that’s where we leave the star-crossed lovers as the first half of the season comes to a close.
While “Cinderella” is a love story that’s been told so many times that “Bridgerton” could have struggled to give it a new twist, the show somehow does manage to jazz it up a little. Yerin Ha is sharp and effervescent as Sophie, and it’s hard not to fall in love with her almost instantly. Plot-wise, there’s some charming “upstairs-downstairs” type interplay a la “Downton Abbey” or “The Gilded Age,” with Sophie’s co-workers Alfie, Irma, John and Hazel (David Moorst, Fiona Marr, Oli Higginson and Gracie McGonigal, respectively) coming off as especially charming. The show manages to address the restrictive nature of Georgian class issues without laying it on too thick, while also driving home the fact that, while the “have nots” are certainly aware of their place in the world, the “haves” are often all-too-unaware of the privilege they hold.
The show also manages to give Benedict a bit more depth than he’d been afforded in the books. While he’s always seemed like a happy-go-lucky chap, we learn that part of Benedict’s affect is in response to feeling eternally out of place, even within his own family. Being a renowned rake, it seems, has become a bit of a crutch and a burden, but without it, Benedict isn’t sure who he’d even be.
There’s background drama a-plenty within the season as well, with Francesca struggling to find her “pinnacle” in her perfectly pleasant marriage to John, Eloise trying to convince her mother to put her on the proverbial shelf, and Penelope dealing with both the aftermath of her Lady Whistledown unmasking and the gossip demands of a too-bored queen. Violet Bridgerton spends the first four episodes of Season 4 getting her proverbial groove back before arranging an evening-time bedroom “tea” with Lady Danbury’s hunky brother Marcus, while maid wars rage on amidst the ton, leading to a tough decision for the Featherington’s maid, Mrs. Varley.
It’s all very pleasant, shiny and rich in the way that only “Bridgerton” can truly be. While other period dramas dabble in similar themes and exquisite fashions, they can be dreadfully serious, what with all their talk of economic collapse and romantic tragedy. “Bridgerton” is pure fantasy with a little bit of smut thrown in for good measure, and there’s never been anything wrong with that.
“Bridgerton” Season 4 Part 1 is now streaming on Netflix.
