Black actors appear in leading roles in Rhimes’s
Bridgerton, including Regé-Jean Page as the Duke of Hastings, and Golda Rosheuvel as the Queen of England.
The show has ignited discussion about British Royals’ possible African ancestry, and at the same time, the plotlines ignore or obscure the evils of colonialism, poverty and racism. All of these were rife in this historical time period, and continue to blight our own era, as I chronicle in my book,
The result is that
The series doesn’t tell us a great deal about what life was really like in England in 1813, the year the series is set, but is rather a fairy-tale that on some levels challenges perceptions of race, gender and sexuality.
'Bridgerton' alludes to and obscures social, racial and political tensions in England’s Regency era, the extraordinary decade that marks the dawn of the modern world.