“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: Read more…