Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story is heartbreaking and a bit sexy – if you can suspend disbelief
Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story
Tom Jones
A new series from Bridgerton so it’s back to the ‘ton’ which I thought was an outdated way of saying ‘city’ but actually I just found out it comes from ‘le bon ton’ referring to ‘good manners’ and thus Regency high society.
This shows how much I know, and if you don’t trust me from now on, maybe that’s wise, and I wouldn’t blame you. Not at all.
Queen Charlotte is an origin story, as we’d say if this were the Marvel franchise, but what you need to know most right now is: while Bridgerton’s first series was great and very sexy, and the second Mills & Boon – like and not very sexy, this is kind of sexy, but more than that, if you stick with it – there’s a big change halfway through the six episodes – it has real emotional weight.
Queen Charlotte is an origin story, as we’d say if this were the Marvel franchise, but what you need to know most right now is: While Bridgerton’s first series was awesome and very sexy
This takes us from 1813 back to 1761 when Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Germany) was married off to King George III at just 17 years old.
I cried at the end, I’m not ashamed to say. Except I am. A little.
This takes us from 1813 back to 1761 when Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Germany) was married off to King George III at just 17 years old.
Lady Whistledown, the writer of the society’s gossip pamphlet (voiced by Julie Andrews), introduces the first episode with: ‘Dear Gentle Reader, this is the story of Queen Charlotte from Bridgerton. It’s not a history lesson. It is fiction inspired by facts. All liberties taken by the author are intentional. To enjoy.’
Hold on, Lady Whistledown’s identity was revealed in series two as Penelope Featherington, who was 18 in 1813, but now we’re 52 years earlier, so this is the voice of someone yet to be born?
You can certainly trust me on one thing: to enjoy Bridgerton, you must suspend disbelief. Pretty substantial.
Charlotte – played magnificently by India Amarteifio as feisty yet vulnerable – arrives in Britain with just six hours to go until her wedding, which actually happened.
But here her first meeting with George (Corey Mylchreest) takes place just before, filled with fear of marrying a man she doesn’t know, she tries to escape by climbing over a palace garden wall.
George bumps into her, and when she realizes that George is charming and also looks part Tom Cruise, part Disney prince, there’s talk, just like you. (There is no topless scythe, but George likes to farm, so luckily for us there will be topless plowing.)
The couple marry, but on what is supposed to be their wedding night, he drops her off at Buckingham House and says cheerio, goes to his own house in Kew, and that’s the last she sees of him, days, weeks. It’s a mystery to us and a mystery to her, but what we remember and what she doesn’t know yet is that this is King George who was mad and was the subject of Alan Bennett’s The Madness Of George III, which is a new had to be titled as simply The Madness Of King George in America, because otherwise they thought they missed parts one and two. That’s a fact thrown in for free.
Where race wasn’t an issue in the first two series, it is here. Charlotte has “moorblood,” and as one courtier remarks with dismay, “Nobody said she’d be so brown.” Consequently, the King’s mother (Michelle Fairley) launches “The Great Experiment” to counter racial snobbery by offering land and titles to people of color – hence Lady Danbury, played by Arsema Thomas as a young woman and Adjoa Andoh as the older Lady Danbury we know.
The elder Lady Danbury is still proclaiming at the back of the stalls: ‘ MARRIAGE is one. DUTY. NOT one. PLEASURE.’ The younger Lady Danbury doesn’t, so it must be something she picked up over the years. This is, I should have said, told in two timelines, so we also have the elderly Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) in her towering wigs and, since she has 15 kids, we know the sex has to happen. But when? And why not yet?
Because there’s real chemistry between the two leads, there’s a desire for it to happen, so it’s kind of sexy most of the time in that way. But, she is quick to add, there are also ordinary pieces.
It unexpectedly switches from her story to his halfway through, and this is when it gets sad and touching and heartbreaking, really, as well as a love story.
Meanwhile, it’s all wonderfully lavish and lavish and the florist bill alone, God knows what that amounted to. It’s not the full five stars though because there are unnecessary subplots – one with Violet Bridgerton – and it drags to the switcheroo in viewpoints. I hope you can find it in your heart to trust me on this. Especially since I, too, live to serve.
On to Tom Jones, an adaptation of the Henry Fielding book, which are actually books, plural, because it has – wait for it – 18 volumes. This was written by Gwyneth Hughes, who adapted the Vanity Fair (2018) I loved, but this isn’t quite up there. Yet. I’ve only seen the first episode (of four), so we might want to give it more of a chance.
This is a light-hearted, frothy take on the misadventures of our hero (Solly McLeod), a foundling raised by a wealthy squire (James Fleet). Once he grows up, he falls in love with his neighbour, Sophia Western (Sophie Wilde), but they are kept apart for reasons that would otherwise take thousands of pages, but thankfully very well told here.
It’s fun to watch, starring several of our best character actors (Alun Armstrong, Felicity Montagu, Shirley Henderson, Pearl Mackie), but it’s superficial and the chemistry isn’t there. Yet.
I’ll report back later, I promise, and you can trust me on that. Or can you?
KISS FOR THE BRIDE: India Amarteifio as Charlotte and Corey Mylchreest, left, as George in the Bridgerton drama. Below: Sophie Wilde in Tom Jones