Bridgerton’s back with a striptease in riding boots and a lusty liaison on a chaise longue
Etiquette demands an english gentleman should always remove his socks before performing the Deed. But as Bridgerton finally reached its climactic moment, Penelope Featherington was completely naked – while her lover still wore his riding boots.
Stars Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton have been promising for weeks that this time, in newly released episodes, Bridgerton goes all the way. And they weren’t fibbing... though, for such an explicit sex scene, it was also oddly chaste.
She plays shy, bookish Penelope, who leads a secret double life as the gossip-writer Lady Whistledown.
He is her childhood friend, Colin Bridgerton, now her besotted fiance, who has no idea about her alter ego – and who nurses a furious loathing for the Whistledown scandal sheet.
How much longer she can keep him in ignorance, and what fireworks there’ll be when he discovers the truth, is the chief source of tension in this big-budget Regency romance.
We last saw the loved-up couple declaring their passion for each other during a steamy carriage ride. Devotees of 19th-century romance will know this scene was shamelessly stolen from Flaubert’s novel of domestic infidelity, Madame Bovary.
But Colin’s first fumble ended in dutiful self-restraint and a proposal of marriage. this time, there is no holding back.
Following a row with her mother (this is essentially a teen romance, after all) the couple retreat to the Belgravia rooms they will share when they are married.
He makes an impassioned declaration of adoration, in very 21st-century language: ‘You make me feel seen in ways i have never felt seen before.’ And then, as she quivers in expectation, he reverts to the more traditional metaphors of Dame Barbara Cartland: ‘Your eyes shine like two blue pools, the firmness of your lips parted just so, the softness of your skin...’
After that, naturally, Penelope is powerless to resist – though his lordship is impeccably conscientious about applying for her permission before every kiss.
‘You must tell me to stop if you do not wish for this,’ he urges. Were there ever four less erotic words than, ‘Reader, he obtained consent’?
Compare this to the moment in Poldark when Cap’n Ross bursts into the bedchamber of his arch-enemy’s wife elizabeth and ravishes her, despite her halfhearted attempts to refuse him.
But then, whatever else he was, Poldark was no gentleman. Colin undresses Penelope in front of a mirror so he can admire her before he has so much as removed his waistcoat. then he performs a striptease for her, before they subside onto a chaise longue.
He flashes his bum, she bares her boobs, just so we can be in no doubt that the Deed is about to take place. ‘May i?’ he requests.
But instead of cutting away discreetly, as Dame Barbara would insist, we’re with the happy couple all the way to the end, so to speak.
thankfully, they’re covered by a discreet blue silk drape, probably supplied by the Netflix ‘intimacy co-ordinator’.
Afterwards, they share the joke that has made newlyweds giggle for centuries. ‘Can we do it again?’ she asks. ‘Give me five minutes,’ he pleads. ‘Maybe ten.’ For the rest of the episode, there’s precious little to hold our interest, because most of the chief characters are so boringly happy.
Colin’s big brother and his bride are blissfully married, his little sister is being courted by an earl, and both Penelope’s sisters are contentedly pregnant.
Only Claudia Jessie as eloise Bridgerton can inject any drama, because she is sulking furiously.
there’s a game of charades, played for high stakes, before eloise threatens to expose Lady W’s secret to her brother.
What she doesn’t know is that Penelope has already exposed everything else to Colin. Oh, the scandal!