The second the theme song kicked in I was hooked on The Buccaneers

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Sometimes, when you are watching television, there’s a moment that tells you that a particular show was made for you. Recently, I had one of those moments. I’m a lover of a period drama. Give me a corset, a gossiping butler and a debutante with a secret, and I’m there. So I was interested in checking out The Buccaneers on Apple TV+, even if the trailer made it seem like it was maybe made for someone 20 years younger than me. (I’m not sure why I thought that would be a barrier given I inhaled the entirety of Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty like it was a legal requirement, but we digress).

The second the theme song kicked in, a cover of LCD Soundsystem’s North American Scum, which is a 2006 tune about how uncouth Americans seem to worldly and sophisticated Europeans, I knew this show had been tailor-made for me.

The Buccaneers is about Americans scandalising uptight British aristocracy.Credit: Apple TV+

Mid-2000s indie references aside, that’s exactly what The Buccaneers is all about: “scummy” Americans scandalising uptight British aristocracy, the clashing of the old world and the new, and how money is a social passport that only sometimes transcends rigid class divides.

The first episode introduces us to a group of wealthy young women from New York who visit London in the 1870s, ostensibly to enter the competitive marriage market there. For lovers of Downton Abbey this might seem like a familiar tale. We’re often reminded that Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) married American debutante Cora (Elizabeth McGovern) because she had the kind of new money that would rescue his struggling estate, whereas Cora’s family were chasing the prestige of a British aristocratic title.

The injection of American wealth into British society is what ancient families needed: the money to keep their peerage alive. But they’re also allergic to everything the Americans seem to represent: individualism and an ignorance, or outright rejection, of concrete social norms.

The first episode sees free-spirited Nan (Kristine Frøseth, whom you might recognise from Looking for Alaska, and her well-behaved but determined sister Jinny (Imogen Waterhouse) attend the wedding of their close and extremely exuberant friend Conchita (Alisha Boe, 13 Reasons Why) to an English lord. Conchita is the first in their crew to get married and the pressure is on for the others to find an upper-crust suitor in the upper crust to improve their standing.

There are family secrets, one harboured by Nan and Jinny’s mother, played by Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks. There are affairs, mistaken identities, sibling rivalry and, naturally, a duke in disguise.

Like Bridgerton, The Buccaneers features a diverse cast that period dramas often lack. It adds a vital layer to the story: Conchita’s in-laws criticise her for being “too much” in language that she knows is racially coded. Her white sister-in-law is praised for her restraint, but Conchita is routinely told she is abrasive and uncomfortably different.

The American girls can’t understand why the British girls whisper every time they enter a ballroom; the British girls can’t understand why the American girls have to enter a room so loudly.

The Buccaneers is based on an unfinished Edith Wharton novel, which was published posthumously in 1938. Your mileage may vary on the adaptation of stories that an author never got to finish themselves – the series Sanditon on Binge is likewise based on an unfinished Jane Austen manuscript – but it’s a useful avenue to play with source material without being accused of being unfaithful to the original. Occasionally The Buccaneers is too enthusiastic about the modernisation of the story, as in a scene when Nan practically gives a TED Talk when she sees her sister Jinny lined up with the other debs being presented like cattle at auction (a Taylor Swift/Phoebe Bridgers song about lost innocence plays sadly in the background). It can be annoying when modern politics is inserted into the speech of a character in a period drama, but this was the only scene where it felt grating.

In terms of updating an old story, what we have here is the Marie Antoinette-ification of the period drama (or A Knight’s Tale-ification, depending on your tastes).

When Marie Antoinette was released in 2006, many critics were scandalised that Sofia Coppola took the story of one of the most polarising figures in history and “reduced” it to a story of teenage girl intoxicated by wealth and charismatic friends, and dogged by loneliness and the expectations of her mother. In retrospect, it’s the reason why the movie has endured: Coppola tapped into an aspect of the legend that was often dismissed, as stories of young women routinely are.

I mention Marie Antoinette because aesthetically The Buccaneers owes it a debt. There aren’t any scenes featuring a pair of Converse (unfortunately) but the needle drops and the contemporary mood of the parties and the way the girls relate to each other feels the same.

Something that The Bucaneers captures that a lot of other TV seems to struggle with is a depiction of girlhood that’s actually accurate. Sure, the show includes a lot of polite dinner parties in dresses with more frills than a bridal shop, but these American girls are wild in the way that teenage girls are wild.

Kristine Froseth as the free-spirited Nan in The Buccaneers.Credit: Apple TV+

They run and tackle each other, shriek when they’re reunited and smother each other in kisses and hugs. They want to dance and drink and gossip and are totally uninterested in explaining themselves to outsiders who don’t understand their shorthand. Girlhood is often depicted as much more genteel and controlled than it actually is. To invoke her again, it’s something Sofia Coppola has always done better than anyone else: examining the tension of young femalehood, the public and the private, the intense restrictions and the vast possibilities, the exhilaration and the danger. Of course, the freedom of Nan and her friends is something that their British counterparts read as disobedience, and despise.

If you like Paramount’s The Gilded Age, but think it could do with a little more energy, The Buccaneers is for you. Like a slice of Victoria sponge laden with strawberries and cream, it’s decadent and delicious. You could call it a guilty pleasure, but frankly, TV should be enjoyed rather than endured.

The Buccaneers streams on Apple TV+

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