Downton Abbey star Hugh Bonneville says the franchise's success has helped give birth to other popular period dramas, such as Netflix's Bridgerton. Premiered on ITV in the United Kingdom and PBS in the United States in 2010, Downton Abbey chronicles the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their domestic servants in a fictional Yorkshire country estate during the post-Edwardian era. Following six successful seasons of the show, Downton Abbey has also spawned two feature-length films.

Premiered on Netflix in 2020, Bridgerton is based on Julia Quinn's collections of romance novels and set in the highly competitive world of the ton during Regency-era London in which young debutantes are presented at court to participate in the upcoming social season. The show revolves around the titular Bridgerton family, with each season focusing on a different member finding love. The first two seasons of the steamy romance drama premiered to record-breaking numbers on Netflix to become the most popular English-language show on the streaming service before being recently overtaken by Stranger Things season 4.

Related: Bridgerton Season 3: Everything We Know (Thanks To The Books)

During a recent interview with Insider, Hugh Bonneville discussed how he believes Downton Abbey's success has paved the way for a new generation of period dramas, mainly Bridgerton. Read what he had to say below:

To have started on something that was slightly pooh-poohed when it was first put out, certainly by [critics], that it was going to be a boring costume drama that no one wanted to watch. And then here we are all these years later, we've given birth to — or I'd like to think we've given birth to — shows like Bridgerton, which have got a whole new generation of people interested in, if not period drama, then the notion that something did happen before yesterday.

Downton Abbey was decidedly an underdog when it initially premiered in 2010, as Bonneville points out. Despite some initial skepticism from critics, the historical drama went on to win 15 Primetime Emmy Awards and garner 69 total nominations throughout its run. Since its conclusion in 2015, the series has launched a respectable franchise that now includes two movies, 2019's Downton Abbey and this year's Downton Abbey: A New Era, both of which Bonneville reprises his role as the honorable Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham.

Downton Abbey's imprint on television is undeniable, though its influence is most apparent in Bridgerton, currently the most popular period drama in the world. Still, Bridgerton creator Chris Van Dusen and producer Shonda Rhimes would have been remiss to simply copy Downton Abbey's formula for costume drama success without bringing anything new to the table. Instead of an accurate historical drama in which its wealthy aristocratic family and their servants are separated by an upstairs-downstairs dynamic, Bridgerton is set in a racially integrated alternate history version of London in which people of color are members of high society rather than resigned to service roles. While Downton Abbey is also PG in nature, Bridgerton, on the other hand, has often set audiences abuzz with its salacious storylines and scenes. Despite the stark differences, Bonneville's point is astute, as many fans have likely migrated from one period drama to the other.

Next: Why Bridgerton Is Not Just A Downton Clone

Source: Insider