Bridgerton Season 3, Part 1 review: Same charm, new depths
Review Overview
Cast
8Characters
8Encounters
8Ivan Radford | On 19, May 2024
Will they? Won’t they? How long until they? Those are the questions viewers ask at the start of every season of Bridgerton, and Season 3’s first half answers all three – and then some. In some ways, that means people might be underwhelmed by the apparent familiarity of the show’s return, but Season 3 smartly navigates known territory so that it can subtly take the series in promising new directions.
As is the custom set in Julia Quinn’s novels, Bridgerton marks each chapter with a different Bridgerton progeny making their debut in the romantic marketplace of the Ton. After Season 1 followed Daphne’s whirlwind passion with the Duke of Hastings, and Season 2 studied the secret desire of Anthony (Jonathan Bailey) and Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley), Season 3 introduces Francesca Bridgerton (Hannah Dodd) to all the suitors out there. She’s a piano player with little interest in the tunes of social convention. Equally tired of the same-old thing is the Queen (the always-brilliant Golda Rosheuvel), who rolls her eyes at the lack of novelty on display in the parade of singletons hoping to curry royal favour.
But Season 3’s real star is what might have been the B-plot: the simmering bond between Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) and Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan). Penelope is the black horse of the Featherington clan, having been out in society for three years now without a husband in sight. That makes her a disappointment to her status-obsessed mother, Lady Featherington (the delightfully wicked Polly Walker), and a forgotten relic to her dreadful sisters, Philippa (Harriet Cains) and Prudence (Bessie Carter), who are focused on having a son so that they become eligible to inherit a fortune – the introduction of James Phoon as the nice-but-dim Harry, Prudence’s husband, finds new ways to highlight the clan’s entertaining awfulness.
Colin, meanwhile, isn’t the handsomest or coolest of the Bridgerton males – that is, until this season, when he returns from a trip round Europe with a boat load of charisma, a swaggering confidence and a shirt with far fewer buttons done up. “Who are you and what have you done with our brother?” demands Anthony as his brother transforms into a rakish rogue who leaves hearts in the Ton all aflutter. But while his popularity skyrockets, Penelope hasn’t forgiven him for saying that he wouldn’t ever date her – something she overheard last season. It’s with no small amount of awkwardness, then, that he offers to tutor Penelope and help her finally bag a husband.
Will they? Won’t they? How long until they? It will come as little surprise that Polin is destined to blossom into a legitimate match this season, but Bridgerton finds all kinds of nuances to draw out of the journey towards that inevitable endgame. That’s partly thanks to the wonderfully bearded Lord Debling (Sam Phillips), a nature lover who is on the hunt for someone to manage his estate while he traverses the globe – Philipps plays him with just the right amount of stoic pragmatism, which puts him on a similar wavelength to Penelope’s cynical observer of human nature.
Penelope’s knack for acerbic commentary, of course, has led to her great success as the anonymous gossiper Lady Whistledown. Last season, in a break from the novels, Eloise Bridgerton (Claudia Jessie) discovered Lady Whistledown’s true identity, breaking her friendship with Penelope seemingly beyond repair. As Eloise resents Colin’s partnership with Penelope, she allies herself with Regency England’s answer to Regina George, Cressida Cowper (the brilliantly selfish Jessica Madden) – only for Cressida to start circling Lord Debling, both to humiliate Penelope and to bag Debling’s sizeable fortune.
There’s plenty of romantic tension to savour in the resulting love quadrangle, but the fact that we already know Penelope and Colin makes their relationship much deeper than those at the centre of previous seasons. Penelope’s poisonous penmanship, which turns on Colin as well as herself, takes Bridgerton into a deceptively thoughtful study of the line between public and private identities. That’s the thing she has in common with Colin too, which takes their match far beyond physical attraction. Nicola Coughlan proves herself more versatile than ever as she sinks her teeth into the tragedy, pain, hope and longing of a woman who fears spinsterhood as much as she loves gazing through her window at her childhood neighbour. Luke Newton, meanwhile, superbly balances the macho bravado expected of a bachelor with the more nervous, sensitive and embarrassed man lurking underneath. We join the couple’s burgeoning connection just as they each face dilemmas and decisions about who they are, to wider society and to the people who matter, and who they want to be in the future.
That theme runs through the subplots surrounding them, from Will Mondrich (a fabulously brooding Martins Imhangbe) faced with the challenge of closing his self-started bar business if he wants to be accepted by the very people who pay for his pints to Daniel Francis’ smooth yet sincere Marcus, the brother of Agatha Danbury (the perma-scene-stealing Adjoa Andoh), who finds himself drawn to Ruth Gemmell’s unsuspecting veteran Violet Bridgerton, despite Agatha’s perception of them both.
As for Francesca, Hannah Dodd finds a refreshing take on a wide-eyed ingenue as her introverted debutante is caught between the suave Lord Samadani (David Mumeni) and the intriguing John Stirling (Victor Alli). While the former brings the conventional narrative beats we’d expect, Stirling brings an offbeat rhythm to the story, as he and Francesca find comfort in silence and saying nothing – a smart and welcome idea in a show that can sometimes get carried away in its stylised period dialogue.
For those wanting more of the same, there’s fizzing fun in the same of Lady Arnold (Hannah New), sizzling chemistry between the returning Anthony and Kate, and string quartet arrangements of hits by Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift and more. But look beneath the surface and Bridgerton still has fresh innovations to bring to the costume drama table, not least in its commitment to diversity and inclusion with such matter-of-fact ease – this season gives us a flirtatious bachelor in a wheelchair and a debutante communicating with sign language. It’s so easy to feel overly accustomed to Bridgerton’s charms without appreciating just how bold they are. And that’s before we get to Part 2, which teases an exciting, character-driven conclusion less rooted in romantic possibilities and more in the consequences Penelope faces in her dual personas. And, for the longtime fans, there’s a very steamy encounter in a carriage to get the pulses racing. Three seasons in and Bridgerton has lost none of its frisson.