Bridgerton upended what a costume romantic dramedy can be, infusing the goings on with a modern soundtrack and lots of sex. A new series from Spain is taking that template and adding to it, including devices such as a main character who often breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to the audience.
Opening Shot: Two people in period dress stand in front of a heart-shaped flower arch. The deep-voiced narrator starts talking about young love. Then a woman interrupts him and takes over the narration.
The Gist: That woman is Elena Bianda (Nadia de Santiago) who has an important job in 1880s Madrid: Society families hire her to be a chaperone to their marriage-age daughters. Chaperones like Elena filter out the bad influences and steer their charges away from men that have lots of red flags. She’s particularly good at her job, especially for someone of her relatively young age; she’s successfully married off 20 girls she’s hired to supervise. But that’s the drawback of her profession: Once the girls get married, the chaperone has to find a new gig.
Elena has her eyes on the Mencía family, who lost their matriarch the year before. Pedro Mencía (Tristán Ulloa) has three daughters: 20-year-old Cristina (Isa Montalbán), considered “The Angel”; 18-year-old Sara (Zoe Bonafonte), who’s thought of as a bookworm but who also has a rebellious streak; and 14-year-old Carlota (Iratxe Emparan), who is described as a “strange critter”.
When Elena gets to the Mencía estate, she’s greeted by Don Pedro’s godson Santiago (Álvaro Mel), who pretends to interview Elena in Don Pedro’s place. Elena, given the fact that she’s young for being a chaperone, finds herself very attracted to Santiago. Don Pedro ends up hiring Elena on a trial basis, but Elena is under the watchful eye of the mansion’s headmistress.
Almost right away, Elena is challenged when the morbid Carlota hides in her room and pretends to be dead. Instead of getting upset, though, Elena ingratiates herself to Carlota, something she tries to do with her holder sisters. But they both prove to be a challenge; not only are they all strong-minded people, but during the opening dance of the society season, Elena finds herself having to keep both Cristina and Sara away from horny suitors.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Gema R. Neira and María José Rustarazo, The Lady’s Companion certainly gives off a strong Bridgerton vibe.
Our Take: The Lady’s Companion tries to place its 1880s Madrid setting into a modern context, with fun camera movements, a modern rock music soundtrack, and lots of fourth-wall breaking from Maria as she observes what’s going on. The color palette of the show is definitely in the pastel Easter-candy style, with most of the women wearing jaunty hats as part of their ensembles.
If the tone had stayed that way throughout the first episode, we would have been a bit annoyed at the gimmickry but at least happy that we could sit through a costume dramedy that had decided to pick up the usual pace these shows tend to have. But then we get bogged down in the scenes at the first society dance of the season, which we’ve seen in just about every show like this over the past decade.
But then, when Elena has to somehow supervise both Cristina and Sara, and the split attention leads to disastrous results, the episode picks back up again. We liked the fact that Cristina, who is supposed to be the attentive, “good kid” of the group who is a de facto mother to her younger sisters, ends up being the one who gets into a situation that will end up compromising her and her family’s status in Madrid society. It also brings a challenge to Elena that she’s never had to deal with before.
What we hope is that the first season shows Elena bonding with these young women, dealing with all the difficulties of managing these strong personalities, as well as realizing that her own romantic needs have been neglected — it’s pretty easy to see Santiago as a love interest for her. There’s a reason why Elena and others around her mention that she’s young for her profession, and that will definitely become a big part of the story once she and Santiago hook up.
Sex and Skin: There’s definitely sex in the first episode, but it’s clothed sex. There may be nudity in other episodes, though.
Parting Shot: After Cristina is left hanging during her engagement ceremony, she tells Elena that the man she was going to marry got her pregnant. The deep-voiced narrator asks Elena if he should take over the storytelling, and an exasperated Elena shouts, “No!”
Sleeper Star: We liked Iratxe Emparan as the very dark Carlota, and how she always dresses in black.
Most Pilot-y Line: As always, we’re not completely sure the fourth-wall-breaking dialogue from Elena is something that’s sustainable for an entire season.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The Lady’s Companion is a pleasant-enough romantic period comedy with a colorful look and just enough modern touches to keep the episodes from being a slog of costume-drama cliches.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.