There’s a new royal in town, and everyone is talking about them. This is a reference not to the bizarre Twitter conflagration over RTÉ daring to carry a live feed of King Charles’ coronation at the weekend – weird how the same people never object to RTÉ clogging our arteries with English soccer or soaps – but to the arrival of Queen Charlotte, a prequel to Netflix’s romping hit Bridgerton.
The six-part mini-series (Netflix, from today) opens with a caveat voiced by the Bridgerton narrator Lady Whistledown (Julie Andrews). She says, a mite snarkily, that the tale we are about to enjoy is “not a history lesson”. “It is fiction inspired by fact. All liberties taken by the author are quite intentional.”
This is astonishing, as it suggests that somewhere in the universe are people who mistook Bridgerton for serious history in the first place. There is little danger of that with Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. It is so over the top it makes Sofia Coppola’s punk-rock Marie Antoinette look like a parish-hall production of Richard III.
The bulk of the action takes place decades before Bridgerton. Charlotte (India Amarteifio) is the 17-year-old heiress of a minor German kingdom. As is the way with minor princesses on television nowadays, she is headstrong and independent, a Gen Zer parachuted into the past and astonished that everybody is so stuck in their ways.
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She is naturally disgruntled about being married off to King George of Britain (and Ireland, we are told in passing). Then it transpires that the regent (Corey Mylchreest) looks like a male model from Paris Fashion Week. Just like that, she’s all in.
One of the stranger objections to Bridgerton had to do with its colour-blind casting. In the prequel, Shonda Rhimes, the showrunner who wrote the majority of the six episodes, explains that the diversity is the brainwave of the king’s mother, Dowager Princess Augusta (played by Michelle Fairley from Game of Thrones). She wants Charlotte to feel less alone in her new home. And so she lifts black families “up” to the nobility.
The diversity does not extend to the accents. Charlotte and the rest of her supposedly German kin speak with impeccable English modulations. And although the dialogue strains for a sort of Jane Austen formality, the soapy roots come through over and over. It’s like watching Skins or Ackley Bridge with wigs.
Bridgerton was a binge-watch bonbon. The spin-off somehow manages to be even flightier and frothier. The tone is playful and, regardless of Lady Whistledown’s frosty preamble, the tale is played largely for laughs. Much like King Charles and his coronation, the biggest mistake with Queen Charlotte would be to take it even slightly seriously. Far better to sit back and enjoy the spectacle on its own ridiculous terms.
