.jpeg?trim=136,0,487,0&width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800 "Eye care products recalled nationwide as customers warned to stop use ‘immediately’ – UK Times")
Netflix has confirmed that Bridgerton season four will premiere in 2026, and that the series has been renewed for two further seasons beyond that.
No specific date has yet been announced for the arrival of the fourth season, which will run for eight episodes.
According to Netflix, season four will center on Benedict (Luke Thompson), “the bohemian second son of the Bridgerton brood.
“Unwilling to settle down like his brothers, his perspective changes when he encounters a captivating Lady in Silver (Yerin Ha) at his mother’s masquerade ball.”
The Lady in Silver’s real name has been revealed to be Sophie Baek.
The third season of the period drama set a new record for the streaming service.
In the first four days of its release, Bridgerton season three clocked up 45.05 million views, according to Netflix’s own figures – around double the previous season. This is estimated to equate to around 165.2 million hours of viewing time.
The tally represented the highest weekly view count for any Netflix series since the streamer began publishing viewing rankings in June 2023.
Writing for The Independent, Katie Rosseinsky argued that the popularity of the Regency romance series had totally obliterated the traditional costume drama.
“In the four years since Bridgerton made its debut, the show has cast an Empire-waisted shadow over anachronistic period productions, leading to projects such as Netflix’s adaptation of Persuasion – featuring Dakota Johnson as a fourth-wall-breaking Austen heroine with a millennial vocabulary – and Apple TV’s version of Edith Wharton’s unfinished novel The Buccaneers, which re-styled Wharton’s new-money, husband-hunting Americans as a girl gang straight out of a Marc Jacobs perfume ad,” wrote Rosseinsky.
“Its influence could also be felt, in watered-down form, in ITV’s take on Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, a novel that Bridgerton’s more bookish characters would surely be familiar with.
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 day
New subscribers only. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled.
Try for free
ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 day
New subscribers only. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled.
Try for free
ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.
“No longer an extravagant, knowingly OTT upstart, Bridgerton is now the model to copy when it comes to telling period stories. But what of the more traditional costume drama? It seems to have all but died out. A decade or so ago, I could’ve reeled off an entire library’s worth of classics that had recently been turned into a weighty, relatively faithful series by a big terrestrial broadcaster.
“But to do so now requires serious wracking of brains. Last year, the BBC unveiled a(nother) version of Great Expectations, written by Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight, but it didn’t live up to, well, its title. And it was hardly a straightforward take, either. If Bridgerton turns up the exposure on life in the past to create a dazzlingly bright fantasy, Knight’s spin on Dickens did the exact opposite…
“The postmodern period drama can be plenty of fun. But when the sugar rush wears off, it’s hard not to crave something a bit more substantial. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was space for both in the TV schedules?”
