Bridgerton without the sex is “like tonic without the gin”, says Maggie Alderson in the Daily Mail. “Because, let’s be honest, ladies, the glorious sex scenes were the entire basis of the Bridgerton craze.” Specifically, the steamy action involving Daphne Bridgerton and her husband the Duke of Hastings, played by Regé-Jean Page. “Dear me. That man’s eyebrows turn most women into quivering wrecks.”
It was already a blow to learn that he isn’t in the new series. But when I also heard it “has very little of the hot stuff in it – a mere three minutes across the series, and you have to wait until episode seven for goodness sake – my beating heart stood still”. In a world where most TV sex is “either violent or gritty”, Bridgerton’s love scenes were “sensitive, yet saucy”, with the pleasure of women, not men, front and centre. Now the show’s creators talk solemnly about artistic merit. They seem to have forgotten that “you can’t have a romp without the odd rollick”.