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Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To not enjoy the "Bridgertonisation" of a lot of period dramas?

56 replies

weeddigger · 05/11/2023 13:30

I Love Emily Dickinson's poetry and so I tried watching Dickinson on apple TV and its just so crap really, they turn this amazing writer into a very shallow, trope of feisty teen saying "dude" and "sick" while the women around her look on aghast and sniff their smelling salts i.e. they try to make Emily seem something by making all the other female characters nothing.

Ok so I admit I may be being unreasonable, that perhaps it isn't aimed at me but it just seems so flimsy, all style and no substance, the dialogue and so on. Sometimes mixing up time periods, using modern music and conventions can really work but other times it just seems like a lazy, formulaic way to try and appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I was looking at the new production of The Buccaneers that is going to be on Apple TV soon but that looks much the same. I suppose things like Bridgeton have influenced these things as well as Marie-Antoinette by Sophia Coppola which I enjoyed at the time but I do find myself wishing for a bit more old school BBC vibes in these productions now and again. I watched things like old productions of Middlemarch on dvd with my Mum growing up and thought they were so well done, and kept some semblance of the era.

OP posts:
KickAssAngel · 05/11/2023 15:38

I enjoyed Bridgerton, and it is so far from realistic that I really don't mind it. You know that this is a fictional world just having fun with the costumes and music etc.
I am less on board with things that seem like they could be trying to be a genuine period drama but actually are totally fake, like The Tudors and Downton Abbey.

weeddigger · 05/11/2023 16:03

TheKeatingFive · 05/11/2023 14:15

Yeah I do know that but for me I didn't like Bridgerton

Did you watch Queen Charlotte as a matter of interest. That's very different in subject and tone than the first two.

I didn't and I am don't have Netflix at the moment as I have apple tv and Disney but will probably cancel them and re-sub to Netflix in a month or two so will add Queen Charlotte to my list for then!

OP posts:
AmazingSnakeHead · 05/11/2023 16:14

I absolutely love Bridgerton, but it is not historical drama. It's set in a fictional alternative universe and is very open about it.

mateysmum · 05/11/2023 16:14

What really gets me is the way modern period productions love to strip out all the things that made a book a classic in the first place. If you take out the details then in most cases you are just left with a standard "girl meets boy", stripped of context and texture. I love Trollope and can rewatch the original Pallisers and Barchester series over and over, but the recent production of Dr Thorne was so disappointing it was a travesty.

weeddigger · 05/11/2023 17:02

AmazingSnakeHead · 05/11/2023 16:14

I absolutely love Bridgerton, but it is not historical drama. It's set in a fictional alternative universe and is very open about it.

Yeah it is of course which is why in my OP I don't specifically attack that show, although it isn't my cup of tea. What I am admittedly moaning about it a very first world problems kind of way is that the success of Bridgerton has in my view influenced the way that lots of other historical drama are being made and not for the better.

OP posts:
LifeofBrienne · 05/11/2023 20:40

On the topic of historical accuracy in TV and film, some people might enjoy Bernadette Banner’s YouTube videos rating historical costumes in movies. Educational and also hilarious amounts of shade thrown on the crap ones. Excellent relaxation watching.

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