BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

Dearest gentle reader, a mood of hysteria has seized the ton.

Rumours swirl of forbidden romance and ripped bodices.

This author concludes that it can only mean one thing. Bridgeton is back. I'm Alice McKee, and you're listening to In the Studio on the

BBC World Service. As Netflix's Regency Romp Bridgeton returns to our screens, I sat down with

the showrunner and the cast to learn about the labour that goes into a love story.

The show takes place in an alternate Regency era London, following the Bridgeton family's romantic

misadventures in noble society.

By Count Bridgeton, yes, are the young ladies of London truly so easily won by a pleasing

smile and absolutely nothing more?

So you find my smile pleasing?

I find your opinion of yourself

entirely too high. Your character is as deficient as your horsemanship. I shall bid you good night.

I love banter, both as a viewer and a writer. And so I think two-hander scenes are my favorite kind of

scenes to write and to watch. And a romantic two-hander is so fun to watch people

flirt. I just love watching people flirt, I think. This is Jess Brownow, Bridgeton's showrunner.

I asked her what romance is she takes her inspiration from when she's writing the show.

It's an interesting mix between Jane Austen adaptations and rom-coms from the early 2000s, I would say.

My wife and I are just really obsessed with both the BBC version and the Joe Wright version adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and then Sense and Sensibility, Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet.

We watch those movies as comfort over and over again.

In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

I think Richard Curtis and Sleepless in Seattle, all those, you know, Nora Ephron movies. I go back to

...