Pirates in love, but don’t ask about plantation
What if two real-life 18th-century pirate captains didn’t just cross paths, but fell in love? That’s the slow-burning premise of “Our Flag Means Death,” the HBO Max comedy series that premiered in March starring Rhys Darby as the blundering gentleman pirate Stede Bonnet and Taika Waititi as the fearsome Blackbeard, with a resplendent head of hair and beard to match.
Leaning heavily on creative license and a loose interpretation of history, the show, from creator David Jenkins, is fueled by a euphoric sense of the absurd: Part action-adventure, part rom-com, part workplace comedy. It is at once ridiculous and grounded in vulnerability, and tonally it has a lot in common with the TV adaptation of Waititi’s vampire comedy “What We Do in the Shadows.” There is blood and violence, but also desire and implied sex happening on this ship of fools. The crew on board Bonnet’s vessel, the Revenge, is more racially diverse than your average white-collar office staff, and it’s a detail that tracks with what we actually know; it’s estimated that a third of the pirates during this period were former slaves.
They’re led by a man who is indeed a silly fop and a wealthy dilettante, but the adorable Bonnet treats them better than most pirate captains: Paying them wages rather than relying on whatever bounty they plunder (a good thing since they plunder so little) and reading them bedtime stories before everyone turns in for the night. Even so, the crew is on the verge of mutiny.
All of that anti-Bonnet sentiment melts away once the deep-voiced Blackbeard enters their midst. He becomes fascinated by Bonnet’s utterly unexpected Bonnetness and the two join forces as co-captains. The comedy of this unusual pairing may not be treated with subtlety, but their burgeoning romance is. The show is matter of fact, if chaste, about queer relationships — between the central duo and anyone else for that matter — and there’s also the presence of a nonbinary crew member who is on the lam and spends the first few episodes in disguise; once this person’s identity is revealed, everyone moves on, more or less unfazed. No one’s really wound up about anything, except the comedy and drama of their pirate lives. It’s an engaging cast, with a roster of oddballs that includes Nathan Foad as Bonnet’s personal secretary and Samson Kayo as the ship’s levelheaded guy who has a romance brewing of his own. There are also cameos by Leslie Jones as the wily proprietor of a tavern she runs out of the Republic of Pirates, Fred Armisen as her barkeep/husband and Will Arnett as a recently deposed partyhearty pirate captain, among others.
But it is the chemistry between the two leads, who are old friends from New Zealand, that keeps this lark afloat. The earnestly goofy Darby plays off the smoldering, swaggering wit of a leather-clad Waititi in endlessly entertaining ways. At one point, they go ashore for a bit of exploring, and there’s a simple but very funny scene where they sit together by a campfire, eating a snake they’ve just cooked and contemplate whether Blackbeard’s culinary talents could be repurposed to open a restaurant. I don’t know if the exchange is improvised or scripted, but it’s the kind of elliptical moment that has nothing to do with the plot but tells you everything you need to know about the deeply amusing dynamic between these two men.
So here’s what’s weird, and I point it out because Bonnet was a real person and they’re roughly following the trajectory of his actual biography: The show paints him as goofy and rich, but fails to mention that his wealth was derived from a sugar plantation he owned in Barbados — perhaps because it’s a not-so-cuddly detail for a good-natured character. But that’s where his fortune came from, and it’s what funded his purchase of the Revenge.
It’s a curious omission because “Our Flag Means Death” doesn’t shy away from getting jabs in about colonialism and depicting certain white people as racist. And people of color on the show name these atrocities explicitly; when Bonnet’s ship runs aground and he is taken captive by an Indigenous tribe, he’s told it’s because “you keep killing us,” despite his protestations that “we’re not the colonialists!” The show isn’t actively avoiding these topics. Far from it.
And yet no one on the crew gives Bonnet any grief about profiting from enslaving people? The show’s comedic framework is built for this very thing! Bonnet is pelted with zingers aimed at every facet of his being — but no one sticks it to him about this? Really?
Is it inconvenient that one of your story’s comedic heroes is based on a person who owned humans for personal gain? Yes! Does that mean you should ignore it? No! Why soften the depiction of a man who, as Wikipedia notes, previously served as a major in the Barbados militia, a rank that “was probably due to his land holdings, since deterring slave revolts was an important function of the militia.” You’d think his crew, especially as depicted here, would have an opinion or two about some of this back story, which they’d no doubt infer from his station and bearing.
This is a narrative conundrum only in the sense that “Our Flag Means Death” has crafted Bonnet as someone you’re meant to root for. He’s gentle-hearted and squeamish about violence, but apparently only when pirating. This is a specific choice and it’s disappointing that Jenkins and his collaborators (including Waititi as an executive producer) didn’t challenge themselves to make a different one.
This erasure comes home to roost and undermines the season finale when Bonnet finally returns home — to his plantation — and shares his war stories. He’s genuinely remorseful and troubled by the pain and destruction he’s caused. But I don’t know how you take any of it seriously — and you’re absolutely meant to — when this same man, in his pre-pirating days, no doubt gazed out over his land, saw the cruelty and death brought to those laboring in his name and felt … unchanged. Your flag means death, is that right? I mean, So does your plantation!
We know this much is true: If a story takes place in the 18th or 19th century and the main characters are British and extraordinarily wealthy, there is really only one way they made that much money.
I’m all for screenwriters finding a way to contend with this, regardless of genre, rather than avoiding it altogether.
Where to watch: HBO Max