Steamy scandals and raunchy romance? Bridgerton wrote the book

But anyone visiting the New South Wales town last month would have seen this step into overdrive, with period dresses, garden parties and thousands of fresh flowers adorning the city.

And it was all in the name of Netflix's Bridgerton.

With Season 3 set to premiere on May 16, the hit show is on a promotional trip around the world, with Australian fans pleasantly surprised to see it making one of its first stops in Bowral.

It was a bit of an accidental coup for the town, with Netflix quietly scoping it out for the week-long pop-up event - and business owners were only too happy to jump on board.

"We didn't find out ... long before everyone else did. It was within a week of the public finding out," says Kylie Hawkes, marketing manager of Bowral's vintage store Dirty Janes.

"They came in and casually scoped everything out and said, 'We're taking over the entire town'. It was an absolute machine getting everything set up.

"But it's a nice little bit of folly. It's pretty and fun, and very floral and cheerful. People have jumped on board and it feels like it's centralised the town."

The exterior of the vintage store - as well as its neighbours - were decked out with fresh flowers and Bridgerton-branded bunting. Inside, the stallholders used their few weeks' notice to ensure their finest vintage wares were on show. Regency furniture, gentlemen's paraphenalia and elaborate decor were just the tip of the iceberg.

And the town's involvement didn't stop there.

The Gumnut Patisserie had a line out the door at its main-street location of customers keen to get a taste of their Bridgerton-themed desserts. The dedicated romance book store Books Ever After ensured its shelves were fully stocked, including copies of the original Bridgerton book series by Julia Quinn. And historic country house Milton Park was prepared for visitors, hosting tours and a regency-themed soiree fit for high society.

Meanwhile, fans from across the country and overseas booked out hotels and vied for tickets to the world premiere of Season 3's first episode.

They weren't yet aware this season's romantic leads Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton would also be making an appearance - a surprise met by tearful fans who happily shared their delight on social media.

Wind back the clock a few years and it would have been unheard of for a period drama, let alone a romance, to have this sort of impact. So what changed?

Set in Regency England during the reign of King George III and Queen Charlotte, Bridgerton follows one family and its nine children as they come out to society. The eldest daughter Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) had a sparkling first season - in society and the show - being named the diamond by the Queen herself (Golda Rosheuvel) and walking away with the Duke of Hastings (Regé-Jean Page) as a husband. It was an enviable feat for the fictional society - known as the ton - and the audience who couldn't get enough of Page's good looks.

The second season saw the very pragmatic eldest son and current Viscount Bridgerton, Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), try to find himself a wife. But while caught up investigating the traits needed in a "good wife", he falls in love with someone unexpected - the sister of his betrothed, Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley).

All the while, the elusive Lady Whistledown (voiced by Julie Andrews) is reporting any scandalous details in her whip-sharp gossip pages. While Lady Whistledown is an enigma to the ton, the audience knows her to be the alter ego of underestimated wallflower Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan).

It didn't take long for Bridgerton's elaborate costumes, a soundtrack filled with classical covers of pop songs, and its romantic (if not raunchy) plotlines to elevate the show to one of Netflix's most-watched series, with more than 207 million views across its two seasons.

The limited series spin-off Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story debuted at No.1 in 2023. A prequel to the original series, it followed a young Queen Charlotte, her love for a king struggling with his mental health, and the impact her regency had on a previously all-white high society.

But Bridgerton's third season is set to become its most successful yet, with fans dying to see if newly minted leading lady Penelope Featherington's unrequited love for the third Bridgerton son, Colin (Luke Newton), leads somewhere.

Regardless, Bridgerton's influence has already reached well beyond its own romantic canon.

We've already seen a run of modern takes on romantic period dramas appear on streaming services, including Mr Malcolm's List and Blood, Sex and Royals.

Meanwhile, in the book world - where Bridgerton first began - romance novels are now the highest-earning genre of fiction, reportedly generating more than $US1.44 billion from May 2022 to May 2023 - double the 2021 figures.

No one has witnessed this more than Kat T. Masen, romance novelist and the owner of the Bowral store Books Ever After which is dedicated to the romance genre.

The business first began in 2018 selling book boxes. It has since opened two stores in Bowral - the original shopfront and the current larger space in The Grand Arcade that Masen needed to keep up with demand.

"There's a huge demand for romance books and we're only touching an incredibly small portion of the industry and that genre," she says.

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"What we're also finding now is that not only is there a demand for romance in general, but people come to us because they want the special editions as well. People love to have keepsake books, especially stories that resonate with them."

The romance genre has a wide remit. Paranormal romance, historical romance, time travel romance, romantic comedy, romantic fantasy - the number of subgenres is near limitless.

But all walk the line between fantasy and reality.

Masen says no matter how unrealistic some of the elements are - say, if your love interest is a vampire - there will be an element that feels real to the reader.

"The possibilities are endless with romance. While there's a lot of universal fantasies, there's so many different twists on them," she says.

"I love that because you can create a whole different world and anything can happen in that world.

"And while it is fiction, a lot of the time there are readers who read your stories and they can really resonate and it can change their life as well."

When Bridgerton first aired in 2020, it was praised for its approach to race.

A biracial Queen Charlotte, a black countess, and a black duke - while not historically accurate, many saw it as an example of colour-blind casting, which has become popular in recent years.

But in Bridgerton's case, it's not colour-blind casting, but colour-conscious casting.

A dive into the show's story reveals it as a reimagining of Regency England where slavery didn't exist, and wealthy people could be black. The plot's tension comes from a society still grappling with its newfound equality. While these rich black Britons went to Eton and Oxford - and in some cases had been royalty in other countries - they were not bestowed their English titles until Queen Charlotte married King George III, kicking off "the great experiment". It's not Bridgerton's main focus, but plays out in the background.

As Kathryn Drysdale, who plays the enigmatic modiste Genevive Delacroix, told the BBC in 2020, "I'm very much playing a mixed-race modiste ... nobody's blind to the fact that I am the colour that I am in this story.

"There is even a discussion in the show between Lady Danbury and the Duke of Hastings where they touch on that and so it just hasn't been ignored.

"And actually, around the Regency era, there were black people and people of all other ethnicities living in the country - we weren't non-existent."

It's something the TV show - with Shonda Rhimes and her production company Shondaland at the helm - has added to the books' plotlines. The show reshapes history to give people of colour equal billing in a genre traditionally populated by white characters, and allow the flexibility to explore race in this fictional world.

It goes back to the idea that romance walks the line between fiction and reality. But some argue that while this makes good entertainment, it erases black history.

The fantasy of Bridgerton leaves little room for the realities of the slave trade that was still in full swing during this point in history.

In the early 1800s - Bridgerton is set in 1813 - the slave trade made up about 11 per cent of Britain's economy. Bridgerton, meanwhile, doesn't even explore class - beyond what some of the working class can do for the rich - let alone acknowledge slavery.

But it never pretended to.

In the opening scenes of Queen Charlotte, Lady Whistledown's words fill the screen.

"This is the story of Queen Charlotte from Bridgerton. It is not a history lesson. It is fiction inspired by fact.

"All liberties taken by the author are quite intentional."

These liberties include the belief held by some historians that the real Queen Charlotte was descended from black Portuguese royalty - a theory Buckingham Palace has denied.

"We took the idea that Queen Charlotte was from black Portuguese royalty and ran with it," Rhimes told The Guardian in 2023.

Even considering Queen Charlotte from the page - where race does not play a part - it's not an accurate representation. By all accounts, the real Queen Charlotte was not known for her beauty.

In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens referred to her as a "queen with a plain face".

Bridgerton's Queen Charlotte is a trendsetter. Her wigs in Netflix's version are a sight to behold. A trailer of Season 3 set social media alight with one wig in particular - it featured a motorised swan circling inside a diorama, set inside the wig.

These wigs are not historically accurate, either.

In other words, a drama about slavery in Britain is a show well worth making. But Bridgerton is not that show.