Julie Andrews dishes out the gossip in the trailer for Shonda Rhimes’ Netflix series Bridgerton

Shonda Rhimes inched closer to beginning her reign at Netflix when the trailer for her new series Bridgerton debuted on Monday.

The new series, which appears to be a nineteenth-century update on Gossip Girl, features Julie Andrews in voiceover as a gossip monger whose pamphlets are the talk of the town in Regency-era England.

Phoebe Dynevor, the daughter of Coronation Street‘s Sally Dyenvor, leads the series as Daphne Bridgerton, whose family leads a series of romance novels by Julia Quinn.

The trailer opens with Daphne walking into a ball in dramatic slow motion while Andrews intones the platitude ‘All is fair in love and war’ on the soundtrack.

She’s introduced to the court of Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) and takes a bow.

Andrews, who voices Lady Whistledown, adds that, ‘The time has come for the social season,’ a line of women get their corsets tightened one by one ahead of a major social event.

Whistledown is responsible for her ‘Society Papers’ pamphlets, which spread gossip in noble circles.

‘You do not know me, but I know you,’ she narrates in a playfully sinister tone. 

Daphne is then seen navigating a ball full of lecherous men, including an older gentleman who confesses that he’s long had his eye on her, which she realizes means going back to when she was five.

As she tries to leave, she bumps into Simon Bassett (Regé-Jean Page), the Duke of Hastings.

Although he appears to have a scandalous reputation as a Lothario, Daphne’s brother introduces them and reveals that he’s good friends with Simon, which makes him more interesting in her eyes.

Meanwhile, Queen Charlotte, who is a reader of Lady Whistledown’s pamphlets, bemoans the lack of any good new romances in her court.

‘How is it possible that there has not been a single betrothal yet? I wish to be entertained!’ she complains while reading one of the gossip rags.

Next, the trailer cuts to an awkward dinner with the Bridgertons and the Duke, in which Daphne clearly finds him distasteful.

‘It would be better if you refrain from thinking about me at all,’ she warns him after he correctly guesses she doesn’t wish to sit next to him. 

The trailer then shows Bridgerton evolving into full-on rom-com territory, as the Duke suggests to Daphne that they pretend to ‘form an attachment’ for their mutual benefit.

Despite his reputation, he’s still highly desired by noble women, so seeing him with Daphne will make them jealous and him more desirable.

And Lady Whistledown has written off Daphne’s potential as a marriageable woman, so her high-profile faux courtship may make other suitors more intrigued by her. 

‘Every presumptuous mother in town will leave me alone and every suitor will be looking at you,’ Simon says.

The final quick-paced montage suggests that Daphne and Simon may have trouble keeping their relationship strictly professional.

In October, Shonda Rhimes opened up to The Hollywood Reporter about her move to Netflix after a decade making hit shows for ABC.

‘I felt like I was dying,’ she recalled of her time at ABC. ‘Like, I’d been pushing the same ball up the same hill in the exact same way for a really long time.’

Rhimes claimed she made ‘tens of millions of dollars’ from her previous deal and made ‘more than $2 billion’ for The Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC.

However, the creator said she constantly butted heads at ABC over the budgets for her wildly successful shows and her creative choices, despite her proven track record.

The final straw that led her to leave the network came after ABC executives refused to give her family passes to Disneyland.

Her series Bridgerton premieres on Netflix on Christmas day.