The time has nearly come for Bridgerton fans who are looking forward to Colin and Penelope’s romance to bloom in series three.
While our writer criticised the “formulaic plot and copy-and-paste” courtship in a two-star review, fans of the Netflix period drama have never been put off by the critics.
The Regency-era drama looks into the personal lives of the eight Bridgerton children. Each book has a focus on a different character with the other siblings in the background.
The third series has been split into two parts and will be based on Julia Quinn’s bestselling book Romancing Mister Bridgerton - the fourth of eight instalments.
It will put Penelope and Colin (Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton) into the spotlight for the first time. Their unlikely coupling is said to be a favourite of devoted Bridgerton fans.
Here is when and how it will all play out.
What time does it drop on Netflix?
The first four episodes of Bridgerton Season Three will be on Netflix on Thursday, May 16.
It was said to drop at midnight Pacific Time, which is eight hours behind GMT, meaning it would be available in Britain at 8am on Thursday.
And the second batch will drop on Thursday, June 13. That will also have an 8am start.
Who is in the cast?
Newton and Coughlan have been swapping the banter on set since series one but their characters have been mostly in the background up until now.
They have become friends on set and are now in a position of becoming more than that in the series.
“It was really scary because obviously we've been friends for years and, you know, thinking about kissing your friend is kind of a terrifying prospect,” says Coughlan.
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“But we went with it and we had an incredible intimacy coordinator who helped us feel like we had a lot of agency.”
The two are the focus of series three, but there is also an enhanced role for Eloise, played by Claudia Jessie. The pair fell out when Eloise discovered that her erstwhile best friend was secretly the poison-quilled Lady Whistledown, purveyor of scandal.
The season also features plenty of material for the show’s older stars, especially Golda Rosheuvel’s Queen Charlotte and Ruth Gemmell’s Violet Bridgerton, who is, as the actress coyly puts it, “beginning to embrace life a little more”.
Other characters returning are Adjoa Andoh (Lady Danbury) Simone Ashley (Kate Sharma) and Jonathan Bailey (Anthony Bridgerton).
New actors are Daniel Francis, playing Marcus Anderson, James Phoon as Harry Dankworth, and Sam Phillips as Lord Debling.
When was the last season of Bridgerton?
Series one was released at the peak of lockdown, on Christmas Day in 2020.
The highly anticipated second series attracted a record 193 million viewing hours in its opening weekend when it came out on March 25, 2022.
When and where is it set?
Bridgerton is set in the early 1800s in Regency-era London, a time of nobility and gentry as well as courtship and marriageability.
The setting of the novels is comparable to Jane Austen’s time but Bridgerton was written by Julia Quinn in the 2000s and all of the stories are of fiction.
Romancing Mister Bridgerton, the novel on which the third series is based, is set in 1824.
Bridgerton was filmed around several locations to get the perfect Georgian-era setting and many of these points you can visit around London.
Ranger’s House in Greenwich serves as the home for the Bridgerton family while Hatfield House in Hertfordshire is used for some interior shots.
Look out too for Hampton Court Palace, which shows up in some garden scenes.
