> Zed Book Club / Bridgerton TV Series, Based on the Julia Quinn Books, A Huge Hit for Netflix
Regé-Jean Page as Simon Basset and Phoebe Dynevor as Daphne Bridgerton in Netflix's new hit original series Bridgerton. Photo: Liam Daniel/Netflix
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Bridgerton TV Series, Based on the Julia Quinn Books, A Huge Hit for Netflix
/ BY Mike Crisolago / January 6th, 2021
It turns out Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series is a hit on any platform.
The literary series, comprised of eight historical romance novels and a handful of collections and novellas, is set in Regency London and revolves around the powerful Bridgerton family as its siblings navigate high society drama in search of love and marriage. The books — the first of which was released in 2000 — became best sellers and, now, the hit Netflix show based on them is reportedly among the streaming platform’s biggest hits.
According to Netflix, the series, which premiered on Dec. 25, “is projected to court more than 63 million households” in its first month, “which would make it Netflix’s fifth biggest original series launched to date.”
And it’s not just that droves of viewers are tuning in to watch it. It’s also getting rave reviews. Rotten Tomatoes reports that season one of the series garnered 92 per cent approval rating from critics and 86 per cent from audiences.
The series is also the first from producer and showrunner extraordinaire Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, How To Get Away With Murder) since leaving ABC and signing an exclusive deal with Netflix in 2017.
Aside from the love, lust, drama and dancing that the show employs to entertain viewers, it’s also received praise for one of the major differences between itself and the source book series: the fact that the show cast multiple actors of colour in main roles in what would usually be a white-dominated period piece.
Variety, in writing about the streaming viewership, added the caveat that “Netflix does not measure its audience the way traditional networks do. The number of viewers Netflix reports is based on the number of subscribers who have watched at least two minutes of a piece of content.”
Regardless, it’s clear that the Bridgerton series is a massive hit with viewers — so much so that a second season appears all but confirmed.