news ‘Bridgerton effect’ hides reality of black lives in British history, says Sara Collins | ITV channel

Viewers are being “lulled into a false sense of security about black people in period dramas” because of “the Bridgerton effect”, according to the writer of a historical

drama spearheading the launch of ITV's streaming service ITVX.The Costa award-winning author Sara Collins said she wrote The Confessions of Frannie Langton, about an enslaved

Jamaican woman in London, as a “black Jane Eyre” to fill a gap, as there were not enough stories about the reality of black people's history .Collins said her gothic romance

was “entirely different” from the “colourblind” casting of Netflix hit show Bridgerton: “This is colour-focused casting. Bridgerton is a fantasy; it's a nice fantasy but

what really interests me is we don't lose sight of the truth.”Costa award-winning author Sara Collins' historical drama is spearheading the launch of ITV's streaming service

ITVX. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/ReutersCollins applauded Bridgerton for helping audiences become “acclimatised” to seeing more diversity in historical dramas, but said she was

concerned people being “numbed to how difficult” it was” for black people in Britain in the past because some may think “but weren' t we queens and dukes?”. She called

this “the Bridgerton effect”.Speaking at the launch for her series in London, Collins said: “A lot of people are probably being lulled into a false sense of security about

black people in period dramas”, but that in The Confessions of Frannie Langton “we're trying to navigate a kind of truth that history hasn't told completely and that's why it's

important”.She added: “I was left with this question, why hasn't a black woman been the star of her own gothic romance? So this is Jane Eyre if Jane Eyre was black and had

shagged the mad woman in the attic and maybe killed Mr Rochester.”Set in Georgian London, The Confessions of Frannie Langton is the story of an intelligent Jamaican woman brought

to England who is accused of a double murder after falling in love with the wife of the eugenics-obsessed scientist she works for.Collins said she wanted to avoid the

“stereotypical, stale, boring old portrayals of slavery” that were “all about stories of physical suffering”, deliberately including a scene in a spanking parlor, so “the

only people being whipped in this show are white man”.She said she thought it was the first TV love story with “slavery as its backdrop”, while the director, Andrea Harkin,

added, “This is not your average period drama … a story like this is so overdue; we haven't seen a character like Frannie on screen.”Karla-Simone Spence, who plays Frannie,