One final tightening of the corset, a sharp intake of breath and we’re good to go. Yes, another savage debutante season is upon us as matchmaking mayhem descends on Bridgerton once more.
While part of the Netflix Regency drama’s undoubted appeal has always been its steamy sex scenes between members of “the ton” – or high society – series four addresses a taboo that may undermine those apparently sultry encounters.
During the Regency era, unmarried upper class women were kept in ignorance when it came to sex, external, while their male counterparts were given carte blanche to travel around Europe gaining sexual experience along the way.
And as newlyweds Francesca nee Bridgerton (Hannah Dodd) and John Stirling (Victor Alli) return to Mayfair from the Highlands, that knowledge gap is causing tension in the bedroom.
The pair, whose official titles are the Earl of Kilmartin and Lady Kilmartin, are struggling to connect between the sheets, and Francesca is desperate to find out if she’s missing something.
And who best to ask about the mystery of female sexual pleasure than your girl tribe, including her mother, Lady Bridgerton (Ruth Gemmell) and sister-in-law Penelope (Nicola Coughlan)?
“It was really nice to see Francesca leaning on her female counterparts to go and get that information but it’s this unfair thing where men are allowed to have experience and women are not allowed to have experience,” Dodd tells BBC News.
“Unless you can have those conversations, I don’t understand how women were meant to get this information, physically and anatomically. Francesca doesn’t know what’s meant to be happening!”
In the series the couple also discuss the issue between themselves.
“John and Francesca have literally met the year before so there’s a lot of getting to know each other but there’s gaps where they’re both introverts… they really have to push themselves outside their comfort zones to even have those conversations.
“It was really nice to actually show the honesty of that in relationships,” she adds.