Note to self - make sure you watch this at all costs  

David Edwards | The Mirror – September 5, 2016

Dear Diary,

They’re back! Not just Bridget, Darcy and daft measures of Chardonnay but the world’s biggest lady pants, which get their first cinematic airing for 12 years.

But the continuing adventures of Bridget Jones are anything but pants, with the rom-com threequel the funniest of the series.

Once again, Renée Zellweger plays the serial singleton – and owner of those roomy knickers – as she copes with her Forties.

Having split from true love Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), she finds she’s expecting. Is it his, or the result of a squeeze with Ja ck (Patrick Dempsey, of TV’s Grey’s Anatomy)?

As a pal puts it, “How do you orchestrate such cliff hangers in your life?”

While Helen Fielding’s newspaper column charting Bridget’s ups and downs was a huge smash, it now seems quaint in a social-media age.

But its core appeal, urging sympathy for a lonely woman who makes wrong life choices still resonates.

From bad dates to beating yourself up to boozy nights-in, there’s Bridget in us all.

If the first film, Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) was a smash and its sequel, The Edge Of Reason (2004), a holding piece, here we have a laughathon.

Zellweger is reliably watchable, both dotty and adorable, while there’s sterling support from Emma Thompson as her GP, urging Bridget to, “Bring along the father, if you can work out which one he is.”

Note to self: watch at all costs.