Phoebe Dynevor: 'Bridgerton's come at a moment when people need it'

The actor on hitting her stride as the spirited star of the Regency romp. Still, she says, she can't let her grandparents see her steamiest scenes...

It was the gift you never knew you needed, and might even have spurned if you had been offered it in advance: an eight-part Regency romance, set in a candy-coloured England where the wisteria forever blooms around the colonnades of pretty much every stately home you've ever seen on film.

But it's estimated that 63 million viewers around the world will have tuned into Bridgerton in its first four weeks on Netflix - and it is a success owing, in no little part, to the on-off love affair between a brooding duke and the pearl of the season's debutantes. In its on phases, this is so steamy and intimate that you'd do well to have one of the series's many feathered fans to hand.