Netflix's 'Bridgerton' Is A Warm Glow For The Cold Holidays

"It's not your mother's Jane Austen." Speaking during the Bridgerton panel ahead of Netflix's new series debut, costume designer Ellen Mirojnick point-blank warned the Austenites in the group to gird their empire waists. Based on the series of Regency-set romance novels by Julia Quinn known as The Bridgerton Series, Netflix's new show was not PBSing up the joint. There would be little in the way of historically accurate washed-out pastels and dim candle-lit whites here. Come for the romance, stay for the outfits, but please leave your assumptions at the door for what you will find here.

It's a philosophy that carries over the show itself, one of the most delightful feminine fantasy romps in recent memory. The romance genre doesn't get a lot of respect on TV. There are the chaste versions that run on basic cable's Lifetime and Hallmark channels. STARZ goes a bit racier, but with the fig leaves of history or time travel to excuse the show as "not just a period piece romance." Netflix needs no such excuses, nor does the new Shondaland show apologize for not having them. It's not a guilty pleasure, and it's not trashy. It's sumptuous, divine, big-budget storytelling. It's a reminder that romances are just as ripe for the plucking for prestige TV, and it's only our culture's pervasive misogyny that denies them that space.

Everything about the titular Bridgerton family is magic — the family has eight children, named in alphabetical order, who live to adulthood. Lady Violet (Ruth Gemmell), their mother, survived giving birth every time. Their father was not so lucky, though his passing somehow failed to affect the family fortunes. The story starts with the entrance of the eldest daughter (fourth born child) into society. Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) takes the family's charmed life with her, immediately declared a diamond of the first water, and given the blessing of Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel). Obviously, she will marry well.