Tag: Netflix

Madeira Mondays: The Lost Pirate Kingdom (TV Show Review)

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This was really awful. 

You’re very welcome to stick around for the rest of this post (and I hope you do!!) but if you’re going to take one thing out of it, it’s the above sentence. Netflix’s new ‘docuseries’ The Lost Pirate Kingdom (2021) was really, really awful. 

It’s one in a new trend of ‘history’ documentary films which features interviews with historians interspersed with extended live action reenactments (aka imagined fantasies) of historical events. This format worked surprisingly well in The History Channel’s Washington last year (which I reviewed here). Washington worked because it had a really star-studded line up of leading historians. It also worked because it had, if I remember correctly, a higher percentage of historians talking and a lower percentage of reenactments than Pirate Kingdom has, although I could be wrong. In any case, I enjoyed Washington just fine and found the reenactments there quite restrained and engaging…rather than the sensational, graphic, needlessly violent and terribly CGI-ed reenactments we find here.

  • A promotional shot for Pirate Kingdom. Presumably this is Blackbeard, who used to set his beard on fire to scare the ships that he was boarding. I didn’t get to the Blackbeard episode. But I’ll bet the show makes a real meal out of this detail – wouldn’t be surprised if his beard shot off fireworks etc.!

I can’t speak at all to the calibre or credentials of the people interviewed in Pirate Kingdom because I’m not as familiar with this historical community. The period that this ‘docuseries’ looks at is the early 1700s, after the War of Spanish Succession, when piracy flourished in the Caribbean. It looks at the lives (and, more likely, the legends) of some of the most famous pirates who lived then: people like Blackbeard (who was a real guy), Samuel Bellamy, Anne Bonny etc.

And, like I said, I’m no pirate expert, but I smelled a rat even in the show’s introduction, when a voiceover that sounds exactly like David Attenborough (but thankfully wasn’t!) told me that this series was about pirates who were the ‘real forefathers of modern America.’ What? I only watched the first episode, so I didn’t stick around long enough to find out what exactly that means, but are they trying to suggest that America was founded not by like, the actual founders, but…pirates? I don’t know, and I really don’t care. By the time they said that, which was about five minutes into the episode, I was already experiencing sensory overload from all the random action on screen and still reeling from the fact that I’d just seen shots of a woman being raped. In the introduction!! (This is how we’re introduced to the famous female pirate Anne Bonny. The not-David Attenborough voiceover says that ‘not all pirates were men!’ and then we see shots of a lady being raped, before holding a knife to her attacker’s throat. Presumably, this is Bonny.)

In addition to the sexual assault moment, there’s also a pretty lengthy torture scene and lots more violence. And I’m not averse to any of these things in film. In fact sometimes they’re necessary to tell a story! And I’m sure that life aboard pirate ships really was awful. But these things just seemed like sensational set pieces there to hold your interest. I felt so patronized by it: like the filmmakers thought I would lose interest if another violent thing wasn’t thrown at me every five minutes.

I actually wanted to hear what the historians were saying, but they cut away from them so quickly I had trouble keeping up. 

  • An illustration of Anne Bonny (and her boobs, I guess) from a Dutch version of Charles Johnson’s book of pirates

Honestly, don’t watch this. I don’t blame the historians, and I don’t blame the actors (who all seemed fine). I actually don’t even blame the people who scripted the reenactment scenes because sometimes the dialogue in them was pretty good, when it slowed down long enough to let people speak to each other. I blame the entire concept and the overall execution. I don’t need some guy yelling ‘I’m Blackbeard! Arrg!!!’ directly to camera for me to be interested. And I’m not alone. People like pirates. The material is inherently interesting. If they just slowed down and let it breathe (and let us breathe) for one minute, maybe we could have engaged with that material in some sort of real way. 

I didn’t even touch on the ‘historical accuracy’ of this because I don’t feel like there’s any need. Hopefully people know that what they’re watching is as ‘historical fiction’ as any novel, despite the historians present. 

I wish I could say The Lost Pirate Kingdom was ‘good bad’, because I love films that are so ridiculous they are good (see my review of Beyond the Mask). But this is tasteless. Can we call it an exploitation film? Maybe. I’ll say it’s exploitation adjacent. But, then again, that’s too high praise because the ‘exploitation’ in those films is often done in a knowing way and as part of a genre. This is just blood and guts, murder and mayhem which is un-self-aware and no fun. And in the guise of ‘education’ no less!! No thanks. 

I can confidently say that this is my least favorite thing I’ve ever watched for Madeira Mondays. At least nobody talks in ‘pirate speak’? Although I wouldn’t put it past them in future episodes. 

Recommended Further Reading/Viewing: 

PS Today’s Featured Image is ‘A French Ship and Barbary Pirates’, a painting from 1615, accessed via Wikimedia

‘Madeira Mondays’ is a series of blog posts exploring 18th century history and historical fiction. Follow the blog for a new post every other Monday and thanks for reading!

Madeira Mondays: Bridgerton (TV Show Review)

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Happy 2021, my friends! I wanted to kick off this year’s ‘Madeira Mondays’ series with a discussion on the hit TV drama set in the Georgian era: Bridgerton. But first…

a brief announcement regarding ‘Madeira Mondays’…

I’ve made the decision of switching these ‘Madeira Mondays’ posts from every Monday to every other Monday in 2021. I thought long and hard about this decision, especially considering that some of you have reached out to me and said that reading this series is something that you look forward to each and every week. I loved hearing that. I love writing them. But I’ve got a rather full spring ahead of me, and I just don’t think I can maintain the quality of these posts while still posting each week. And I’d rather cut down on the quantity than cut down on the quality. And I’ll be posting a little more this year about writing reflections and my life as an author, so those posts will take up some time too.

So I hope that’s all okay with you! There may be a time when I can go back to every Monday – we shall see! – but for now it’ll be every other week (or once a fortnight, for those in the UK and/or for those like myself who just enjoy using words like ‘fortnight’). And I’ve got so many posts I’m excited about planned for you – posts on 18th century medicine, more recipes, and hopefully some site visits whenever it’s possible to visit places again! If you find yourself missing the weekly posts, you can always have a look through the back catalogue of ‘Madeira Mondays’, which has now amassed around 70 posts (!), covering everything from historical fiction book reviews, to my historical cooking disasters. I hope you enjoy. Now, back to Bridgerton…

What is Bridgerton?

So many people – friends, family – have asked me if I’ve seen this show. I totally get why they ask. I volunteer as a historical tour guide (and occasionally a costumed character) at a restored Georgian House in Edinburgh that depicts exactly the time period when Bridgerton is set. I have been known to enjoy frothy and fun TV shows, and I write about and study this period of history…I get it! However while Bridgerton has its charms – we’ll get to that in a sec – and ticks a lot of my boxes on paper, the first episode wasn’t my cup of tea.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. What is Bridgerton? It’s a TV series (apparently based on a series of 8 books by author Julia Quinn). It was released on Christmas day 2020 on Netflix and produced by TV titan Shonda Rhimes (who created Grey’s Anatomy). It’s basically a soapy drama following the lives of the elite ‘Bridgerton’ siblings as they make their way through Regency London, trying to find socially advantageous marriages (I only watched Episode 1, so perhaps it becomes about more than that, but I think that’s probably a fair synopsis!). I’ve broken my thoughts into different categories so let’s dive into the sumptuous world of the Bridgerton siblings…

Characters and acting

I gotta say that the tone of the acting was great. Maybe the best thing about the show. It’s mostly a set of hilarious and broad performances, which suits this cheeky and fun story just fine! It’s very lively and no-one seems to be taking it very seriously.

The young woman playing one of the daughters, Eloise, reminds me of young Carrie Mulligan. Her name is Claudia Jessie and she brings a very feisty energy and I always enjoyed it when she was on screen.

The hottie playing the Duke of Hastings, actor Regé-Jean Page, was particularly good too. He’s giving me a grumpy Duke Orsino vibe. He actually gave me very ‘Shakespearian actor’ vibes overall, and when I looked him up, I saw he began this career on stage in plays like Merchant of Venice! I knew it! (I did a lot of acting growing up and all through my uni days, including many Shakespeare plays, and I was happy my hunch proved correct!)

The characters are standard fare for this type of drama, nothing special there, but the actors all seem pretty top notch.

The look and sound

The costumes were also good to me. I’m not an expert here, of course, but most people were wearing period appropriate Empire waist dresses, while some of the queen’s ladies and the queen herself were wearing older styled gowns with stomachers etc. The gowns were VERY colorful, particularly for the comical Featherington family, and I got the sense that the costumer was leaning into the fantasy element and trying to almost make them look like costumes. Which I really liked.

Queen Charlotte (center) portrayed by Golda Rosheuvel, wearing a more ‘old fashioned’ gown, which would have been more fashionable in the late 1700’s, rather than the early 1800s, when this is set.

A lot of the score is from the Vitamin String Quartet, which I think says a lot about what they were going for with the show. I, for one, love Vitamin String Quartet: they do innovative musical versions of pop songs. I like their Regina Spektor covers myself! In Bridgerton, we hear instrumental versions of things like ‘Thank you, next’ by Ariana Grande. So instead of actual historical tunes we get pop songs reworked with a classical edge (straight out of the playbook of something like Reign). Good choice, again suggesting that this is a modern fantasy version of the Regency.

Historical accuracy

This is where we get into some trickier territory. Something notable about the series is the racial diversity of its cast. I have no idea if race becomes a theme in the series, which could be very interesting, but we see a lot of actors of color in episode one, portraying characters at all levels of society, from servants to the Queen herself. On the one hand, it’s good to see diversity in a period drama because of course people of various races populated a city like London in the early 19th century. And all too often period dramas don’t explore the lives of people of color in the historical past. Also, this is so clearly a fantasy in all respects and it isn’t striving for historical accuracy (for more of my thoughts on ‘historical accuracy’ in film and TV, see my review of Dickinson).

But there was an also unexpectedly sad edge, for me, to this casting. This drama is set in elite London society, the richest of the rich, at a time when racism would certainly have prevented most people of color from rising to this level of wealth and social influence.

I don’t like the idea that some viewers might be watching this show and thinking that racism didn’t exist in Georgian Britain because it absolutely did. And while sometimes extraordinary women like Dido Belle (who had an interesting film based on her life, called Belle) were able to exist in elite British society, despite their racial background, it sadly wasn’t the norm.

I’m hopeful that people watching the show understand that this is a fantasy in multiple ways and one of those ways is the idea that the color of your skin wouldn’t impact your life in elite British society – because it would have. Remember that even though this show isn’t set in the U.S, slavery was still alive and well over there, in Britain’s former colony, and the wealth that the Bridgerton siblings and their friends are enjoying is a wealth built from empire. 

ANYWAYS, I digress, but this choice which, initially, I quite liked, also had an unexpected sadness for me too. So…mixed feelings!

Plot/Story

This is where the show really fails for me. If you’ve seen this type of film before or read this type of book then you can guess what the plot will be. Thus far, there weren’t any surprises or unusual twists and turns regarding the story. It’s what you’d expect. This was the most disappointing element and probably the number one reason I don’t think I’ll be watching more of the series. (This is all just going off Episode 1 alone!). Nothing about the story felt fresh at all.

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In conclusion, overall…Bridgerton is fine.

This is absolutely the type of show that you could easily pass a happy afternoon or evening ‘binge’ watching, especially if you enjoy Jane Austen novels. Or if you like, for lack of a better word, ‘marriage market’ stories where wealthy English people are trying to figure out who to marry and how to strike that balance of romantic happiness versus social security.

Those aren’t my favorite types of historical stories – I admire someone like Jane Austen though, for her cutting wit and understanding of human nature. But she was writing about her own society and her books provide a really unique (and critical!!) perspective on it – that is very different from a modern show like Bridgerton which romanticizes the historical past to this extent.

Basically, it just didn’t win me over. I found myself very bored halfway through the first episode. I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and I found myself wishing that I was watching that instead. I found myself wanting to check my email. I found myself feeling sad that this wasn’t floating my boat, because I often love silly and fluffy historical dramas, but ah well!

I’ve seen it compared to Downton Abbey, but I don’t think that’s fair. Downtown Abbey was a soapy drama, sure, but I’d argue that the writer and creator Julian Fellowes was deeply interested in the real societal changes happening at the time he’s writing about and often those themes are reflected in the storylines (whether that’s more women entering the work force or the breakdown of noble titled families and the selling of their estates, etc.). The writing was also full of surprises. Those surprises were often bonkers, yes, but they made for engaging viewing.

Sorry for the first ‘Madeira Mondays’ to be a bit of a ‘bad’ review, but I honestly expected to enjoy Bridgerton and was disappointed when I didn’t! It’s the number one thing viewed on UK Netflix at the moment right now, so evidently a lot of people are really enjoying and engaging with the show! And I get that. It’s fun! It just wasn’t for me.

What did you think of ‘Bridgerton’? Should I give it another try and watch Episode 2? What holiday viewing did you watch over the break?

Recommended Further Reading/Viewing:

  • Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (a novel published in 1847 and set in the same time period as Bridgerton, full of social climbing, dalliances at Vauxhall, hot rich people in late Georgian England!)
  • Vanity Fair, the 2018 TV series starring Olivia Cooke as Becky Sharp (I really enjoyed this adaptation and thought Cooke was brilliant. It was the first time I liked that character. Although I did watch this on a plane while exhausted and drinking a lot of complimentary wine – but still! I think it’s good!)
  • The BBC Pride and Prejudice from 1995 (A hugely enjoyable adaptation, full of wit and fun)

PS Today’s Featured image is:Tom and Jerry and Logic making the most of an Evening at Vauxhall: 1821, Etched by I.R. and G. Cruikshank, accessed via The Museum of London’s website

‘Madeira Mondays’ is a series of blog posts exploring 18th century history and historical fiction. Follow the blog for a new post every Monday and thanks for reading!