There is something inherently embarrassing about watching Bridgerton in Britain. It is so palpably, monstrously, uninhibitedly woke; an American fever dream of England in which an all-English (and the odd Australian) cast cavort as members of the ‘ton’ for money they’d probably never get from the BBC.

In front of the great Bridgerton mood board scrawled with such words as ‘Downton Abbey’, ‘Jane Austen’, ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ and – of course – the most Shondaland touch of all, ‘Diversity!’, the likes of Adjoa Andoh and Lorraine Ashbourne do their thing while (one imagines) the suits at Shondaland clap with pleasure.

Shondaland is the woman (Shonda Rhimes) and production company behind Netflix’s adaptation of the Julia Quinn novels. In Rhimes’s Bridgerton, minority actors and those with disabilities (including deafness) outnumber those that one might imagine peopled the Regency court. Central to the all-shapes-sizes-and-colours doctrine is the portly Penelope, played by Palestine activist Nicola Coughlan, who lurked unnoticed until bestie Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) returned her affection last season in a stretch of credulity too far.

By and large, the wacky diversity approach works – and Shonda’s crew have gone the whole hog in the latest series. If one is left wondering if there were really so........

© The Spectator