Bridget Jones's Baby (2016) continues the account of the life of the eponymous diarist, as the film opens with Bridget (Renée Zellweger) turning forty-three, having aged only eleven years in the fifteen-year period since the franchise's first film, Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), in which Bridget was thirty-two. Single once again, Bridget none the less becomes pregnant after two one-night stands, one with American internet dating tycoon Jack Qwant (Patrick Dempsey) and another with childhood friend and old flame Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). Uncertain as to who the father is, Bridget allows both men to believe the child to be theirs, with both happy to prepare for parenting duties even after Bridget explains to both men her confusion over the father's identity at a meal at Gianni’s, an Italian restaurant near Bridget's flat. A rivalry develops between Jack and Mark, with the former eventually losing out to the latter when Bridget grabs Mark's hand during the delivery of her child – a clear sign that he is the man for her rather than the result of pain-induced confusion. Although Jack is present at their wedding and clearly now a close friend, the film ends with Bridget marrying Mark, who also turns out to be the father of their son, William Jones-Darcy.

There have been Anglo-American relationships in all three of the Bridget Jones films. In the first film, for example, Mark is initially going out with American lawyer Natasha (Embeth Davitz), with whom he moves to New York, before returning to London to be with Bridget. In Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004), meanwhile, Mark is again associated with an American, Rebecca (Jacinda Barrett), who turns out to be obsessed with Bridget, as opposed to being her rival. What is more, Renée Zellweger, who plays Bridget, is of course an American actress playing a British woman – an idea to which I shall return – while all of the films are also international co-productions involving British and American funding. None the less, where, in the earlier films, Bridget had to choose between Mark and playboy Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant) – who, in the third film, is supposedly dead after a plane crash, although a newspaper headline seen in the final moments suggests that he has been found alive (opening up the possibility for more sequels) – here she has to choose between British Mark and American Jack.