Entertainment has, for the last few years, come down with whodunnit fever. Think about how many charming murder mystery shows have appeared: Only Murders in the Building, The Afterparty, Death and Other Details, The Residence, Poker Face… the list goes on. I’m not talking about the preponderance of crime procedurals or thriller mini-series that have been reigning in TV guide ledgers for decades, but a crop of quaint whodunnit and murder mystery programs. In my mind, nothing proves my point more than the fact that the already-serial-killer-centric show You turned Season Four into a country-house whodunnit.
It feels like every show wants to be a quaint murder mystery except Bridgerton. And I’m here to ask… why not? There should be more murders in Bridgerton.
Now, I know the beloved Netflix series is based on a beloved book series, and there probably aren’t murders in those. But who cares!? This will not be the first time that the series has played with textual infidelity. Add a murder! Or a suspicion of murder, at least!
Now, you might be wondering, what will that accomplish? Well, GENTLE READER, it will do one thing the show already likes to do, which is switch micro-genre from season to season! Season One was about longing across self-imposed barriers (which I would classify as Sense and Sensibility on steroids), Season Two was “enemies to lovers,” AKA Pride and Prejudice, Season Three was “old friends to lovers,” and Season Four is Cinderella. How about Season Five become a murder mystery?
This won’t even be that much of a stretch, given the series’s regency source material. Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen’s under-sung novel about a young woman who reads so many gothic novels that she starts thinking that they are what life is like, and therefore starts suspecting her boyfriend’s dad of having killed his wife. How about we give that plotline, or a cannier version of it, to Eloise, next season? Or someone!
What it really offers, though, is an even more fun reason to watch the show. I like Bridgerton because I like romance, but I like romance even more when it’s intermingled with something mysterious and exciting, like crime. I’m assuming you all do too, since you’re reading this website right now.
Jane the Virgin did this especially well, reminding us all that if you’re going to be a soap opera (which Bridgerton certainly is), the second best question to be asking, after “will they or won’t they?” is “is so-and-so the murderer?”
I rest my case.
