“Bridgerton” prequel: some greatness, then very-goodness

In its first hour, the “Bridgerton” prequel seems ready to be a really great show.
It soon retreats into merely being a very good one; it insists on emphasizing – and even expanding — a crisis from history. But that opening hour is a gem.
“Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story” (shown here) is a six-parter that arrived recently on Netflix. It maintains the lush look and vivid characters, while jumping between two timelines.
There’s the one we know from the first two “Bridgerton” seasons: King George, descended into madness, is mostly invisible; his wife Charlotte is the unflinching, unsmiling ruler. And there’s this prequel time, when she was 17, heading to marry a king she’d never met. That’s the part that produced three amazing scenes in the first hour:
— On her ride to London, Charlotte describes the torturous clothes required for her flawless look. The monlog/rant/diatribe is written with sharp wit and delivered (by India Amarteifio, shown here, a newcomer to American viewers) with calm perfection.
— Her “meet-cute” with George is a variation on a scene we’ve seen too often in Hallmark and Lifetime films. This time, however, it seems fresh and clever.
–Soon, palace leaders discuss whether she’s simply “too brown” and needs to be sent back. At that point, we see see that this is reworking a successful formula.
In its first two seasons, “Bridgerton” was a sweet, fairy-tale kind of show Yes, in real life George and Charlotte did rule England for 59 years – with her role expanding as his mind collapsed. But the show imagined that she was Black and that the court was a serene Black/white mixture, with no one seeming to notice. This was the impact of producer Shonda Rhimes (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal,” etc.), who creates wonderfully diverse worlds.
In this prequel, however, the subject comes up often, sometimes humorously and sometimes not. This new version seems to fit our current world, in which the monarchy blew its chance for Meghan Markle to help create a bridge to distant parts of the commonwealth.
The young-Charlotte story is also crucial in another way: George’s breakdown looms large.
In real life, his collapse – alternately theorized as porphyria or bipolar disorder — was rarely a factor until he had been married to Charlotte for 27 years and had been a successful king for 28. But this series seems determined to jam that into the start of the marriage and the reign.
That means there’s less fun in the young-Charlotte time. Fortunately, there’s some from old Charlotte. By this point, she’s had 15 children … none of them interested in starting the next generation of heirs.
Other stories involve the evolution of Lady Agatha Danbury and her fragile friendship with Lady Violet Bridgeron. Such plotlines spark things, when all the young-Charlotte problems seem overwhelming.
But we can never doubt Charlotte at any age. Ultimately, she’s a victor – albeit a grim one. And her story – kind of great at first – settles for being very good.