Oh gods what fresh hell is this? I am still watching but cannot suspend my disbelief any longer.
Benedict is a randy chlamydia ridden koala and what's with the sideways smirk? I know, it's meant to be rakish charm combined with boyish vulnerability but he looks like he's trying out for a gurning contest and the minute you see it, it removes any tenuous sex appeal he may have had.
Episode 3 - they end up soaked through in the storm, break into the house and light a fire. Great! So what happens to the horses? Last seen standing in the gravel, hitched to a gig in the pouring rain, as if they were a bloody car that's just parked up. Was there a convenient groom, that they somehow didn't contact or ask to help them get into the house, who picked up the pieces there? Did Benedict, mysteriously wounded on the flank with a diffuse bruise ( that somehow develops into a fresh looking straight linear scar) when he shows it to Violet in episode 4 manage to get out and unhitch /stable the horses before collapsing? Did the overly competent masquerade maid manage to fit that in in between lighting fires and mopping his fevered brow? What kind of first aid is some mysterious liquid found in a bedside bottle,(alcohol? Aftershave? Water from a flower vase?) and an incompetently tied bandage strip and pad for a wound anyway? and how does it provide such instant relief? How does she manage to do the manual work of multiple people in related to running a regency household and have nice hands/nails, and time to read?
Whistledown just doesn't work without the anonymity and subterfuge, it's now narration padded out with boring and enfeebled analogies. Equally, all earlier nods to a class system with ton, demi monde, servants etc that were in the first few series have completely evaporated. Now we have maids sitting with their mistress for an informal chat like it's some sort of personal development meeting? All the interplay of relationships, friendships and contacts that could be made, that were unacceptable, taboos, shiboleths, society rules, and decorum are just gone.
Right, I am willing to accept it's totally ahistorical regency lite. I can deal with alternative histories and colour blind casting, it made for some great earlier series and some fabulous actors getting involved.
But we have now firmly gone with the Netflix curse of all issues must be represented in the current approved fashion. So we have a minor character housemaid with a limb disability (why couldn't she have been a debutant, it would have been more convincing than as a house maid?) a couple speaking BSL in a crowd scene, nothing wrong with any of these things but it all felt so tokenistic and shoehorned in, in a way that is conspicuously different from the earlier series.
On the same note - it's trying so hard to be relevant and au courant, with the sub plots. Maids and their labour market issues! An older woman rediscovering her sexuality, dealing with age and self image! Young bride struggling with her sexuality in a relationship with an almost painful absence of chemistry (but somehow still the worlds most supportive and sensitive regency husband giving her a very modern total acceptance pep talk? )
(My bet is on F discovering her same sex attraction and some sort of thrupple with the intrusive cousin, and I will be v disappointed to be wrong) with alternative theories include her discovering she is asexual. Or neuro diverse. Or possibly all three?
Incidentally, the cousin arriving like a hoydenish highwayman, driving her own coach, as her coachman had motion sickness - well, why would he be employed as a coachman then? Surely that major issue might have come up during his apprenticeship and previously employ? Unless he's being shoehorned in as a sufferer of mennieres or something?
Still loving the costumes the hair, the cakes, the style, and a few strong actors who can wring a good performance out of this drek but my god, it's even painful to hate watch now.....