We now scorn pulp historical fiction. But will Bridgerton spark a revival? 20 December 2020 • 6:00am Regency raciness: Netflix’s Bridgerton can trace its lineage back to the work of such 20th-century novelists as Georgette Heyer, Anya Seton and Jean Plaidy Credit: Netflix On Christmas Day, Netflix launches its latest glossy historical drama, a Regency romp called Bridgerton. It promises to be the same breed of mildly sexed-up Jane Austen pastiche as Andrew Davies’s ITV series Sanditon, which flopped last year. And, like The Crown, which applies so much poetic licence to true events, Bridgerton is unlikely to win the streaming giant any awards for historical accuracy. The source material, after all, is a series of novels by the American writer Julia Quinn, the titles of which – The Viscount Who Loved Me, It’s in His Kiss – don’t exactly conjure up the Regency period.