Horny delights of CGI Regency London
BRIDGERTON continues to tighten its terrible, inevitable grip. It’s not hard to see why the Christmas Day release has captured even the most reluctant imaginations — and why every day yet more nonsense-refuseniks are yielding to the horny delights of CGI Regency London.
And it’s only partly because there’s nothing else to watch on Netflix now.
Bridgerton inhabits a world with strange and contradictory rules about proper conduct; where interactions with people outside your household are codified and scrutinised: what to wear to promenade in the park, with whom, for how long, do you touch?
This is a world we can understand. If the high stakes in period dramas never hit home before, they do now: being caught snogging the wrong person really can ruin you in a
2021 pandemic the way it did in 1813 high society. Physical contact has once again acquired universal moral value, it can ruin reputations and prospects. We understand the insatiable horniness of the Bridgerton universe.
It’s hard to believe that it’s the plot, which is concerned mostly with the mechanics of human reproduction, pulling viewers in for a repeat binge the minute the first one has finished.
Our heroine Daphne wants a baby but doesn’t know exactly how they are made; her new husband the Duke does not want a baby and so finishes into a handkerchief for most of the series. Sweet young Daphne doesn’t realise her coitus is being interrupted.
The manner of a duke’s ejaculation should not a series make, but these are unprecedented times. And Regé-Jean Page is so handsome he almost makes it look dignified. Elsewhere, thank God, is Nicola Coughlan whose role as Penelope Featherington, the greatest friend a girl could have, is wish-fulfilment for locked down and lonely millennial women.
It’s not the only wishfulfilment on display.
Bridgerton imagines a world in which a black woman marries into the British royal family and this makes the country less racist instead of more racist. The truth is stranger than fiction.
And there was one woman who wasn’t about to let the public hunger for lustful royal/royal-adjacents pass without capitalising on it.
In an announcement that sank to the bottom of the pile, amid peaking Covid, presidential impeachments and Armie Hammer having to deny he’s a cannibal, Sarah Ferguson is set to publish her debut Mills & Boon.
It’s called Her Heart for a Compass —andina short but alarming video on Twitter, Fergie (who is perhaps in Victorian-ish fancy dress, but perhaps has just been reunited with her Sloane Ranger selkie skin) tells us it will follow one Lady Margaret, and the first thing we learn about Margaret is that she “loooooves to ride side saddle”, which is, I think, 19th century for ‘is a selfrighteous virgin’.
The accompanying dramatic widening of Fergie’s eyes suggests Margaret will be straddling like a pro by the time the book is concluded. In fairness, between Bridgerton and Normal People, this does appear to be our favourite sexy plotline. Fergie continues: “She’s strong. She’s rebellious” (B-roll of Fergie walking beneath a bower), “She’s courageous” (Fergie swishes her skirt to reveal leg).
A cursory check reveals your darkest suspicions were correct: the duchess “draws on her own unique life journey and experiences” to draw the story of this “flame-haired” aristocrat. The elephant in the room, curiously shaped like her ex-husband and current housemate, trumpets forlornly.
Poor Fergie, it wasn’t even the most unlikely thing we heard about a royal last week: Rob Lowe started a scurrilous rumour that Prince Harry has grown a ponytail.
Lowe, of The West Wing and Parks and Rec fame, was appearing on The Late Late Show with James Corden and could hardly wait to be introduced on Zoom before imparting the urgent gossip that he had just seen Prince Harry at a stop light in their shared neighbourhood of Montecito, California.
“It was very, very quick — don’t totally quote me on it — but it looked like he’s wearing a ponytail,” said Lowe, who is a master of deadpan, who surely knew what he was doing. “I’m just saying. It looked tomeasa casual observer that his hair had grown very long and was pulled back very tightly by what I can only assume was a ponytail.”
Obviously, this is ridiculous — more ridiculous than Sarah Ferguson writing an erotic novel based on her own experiences — and yet we all stopped and scratched our heads and wondered when it was the last time we saw Prince Harry.
Could it have been the Christmas card?
The Christmas card that appeared to be a photo that had been sent through a ‘painting’ filter in a souvenir photo booth — that obscured the Sussexes such that individual features (like, for example, hairstyles) were no longer discernible? Have we actually seen the back of Harry’s head recently?
A spring of doubt bloomed in your stomach and you remember that he once wore a swastika
— so is a ponytail more unlikely? (Yes.)
You remember Harry’s longheld penchant for motorbikes, his history of small bad decisions.
You realise you haven’t thought about coronavirus in seven minutes.
You relax: Prince Harry definitely doesn’t have a ponytail.