Gold-plated Bridgertons – Weekend
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Buccaneers is coming to Apple TV+. The new film adaptation of Edith Wharton’s unfinished 1938 novel is completely in line with the new Victorian TV series and, accompanied by a soundtrack from Taylor Swift and LCD Soundsystem, tells millennials how to make friends with money and social status.
1870. Four blooming girls gather in a New York mansion for the wedding of their friend Conchita (Alisha Boe) – a dark, cheerful girl (Brazilian blood and a good dowry) after a passionate affair marries the pale lord Richard Marbel (Josh Dylan), the youngest scion of a prim British family. The restless groom almost escapes at the last moment. He is persuaded to come to his senses by the bride’s friend Nan St. George (Christine Froseth): having picked up her skirts, the girl deftly climbs out of the window and descends along the ledges on the wall onto the sidewalk to pick up her friend’s fallen earring – and together with the earring, she puts into place the person who drove up in the carriage with a farewell note from the groom. A young man passing by admires her agility from afar – his name is Guy Tvart (Matthew Broome), and we will meet again.
By returning the groom to her friend, Nan thereby determines her own destiny. Richard convinces the parents of wealthy New York heiress Nan and Ginny St. George (Imogen Waterhouse), as well as Lizzie (Aubrey Ibrag) and Mabel Elmsworth (Josie Totah), that in a matrimonial sense, New York is a desert. Therefore, it is necessary to send the girls to London to look for well-born grooms and keep company with his newly-made wife, so that she does not feel inferior far from her homeland. The scriptwriters didn’t bother introducing each girl with some opening episode that would allow her to be remembered and distinguished from others. They were simply poured onto the screen like colored peas, signing their names in the frame, as they once did in silent films. This technique is reinforced by the scene of the London debutante ball, in which Ginny, Lizzie and Mabel will participate: each participant holds a sign with a number in front of them, while they are judged, as if displayed on a counter, by the London snobs. Nan is too young to participate in this disgrace, and watches from the spectators’ balcony – until she spots Guy Twart in the crowd and, in her excitement, drops her shoe, which plops right into a giant birthday cake. For this offense, she is exiled to the provinces, where she meets the “best groom in England,” the Duke of Tintagel (Guy Remmers) – and a love triangle is ready.
The series is based on the last, unfinished novel by Edith Wharton, “Buccaneers” (1938) – the material is original, but the series looks secondary – like a hybrid of “Bridgerton” by Shonda Rhimes and “Gilded Age” Julian Fellowes. Contemporary music sounds in the frame, ranging from Taylor Swift to LCD Soundsystem – although when you see the riotous fun of American women in front of the shocked Englishmen, the first thing that comes to mind is Cyndi Lauper’s immortal hit “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” This technique has already become a distinctive feature of new Victorian series: the anachronistic soundtrack is in the series “Dickinson”, “Vanity Fair” and the same pseudo-Victorian “Bridgertons” – apparently, this is easier to sell classics and costume films to self-obsessed millennials.
New Victorian TV series generally seem to be drawn from the same barrel – colorful, charming, simplified, they use classic plots as a reason to talk about their own, fortunately, the problems of feelings and sensitivity, career and marriage, money and status are eternal, and you can draw your own colorful scribbles even on top Thackeray, even Jane Austen. Thus, screenwriter Andrew Davies, the main Austen film adapter in Britain, completed the unfinished novel “Sanditon” for the television production and did not fail to quote himself: if in his “Pride and Prejudice” (1995) Colin Firth bathes in a white shirt, which is erotically sticks to his beautiful chest, then in Sanditon, with no less success, Theo James in the role of Sidney Parker demonstrates his perfect ass. There is exactly the same scene in the current “Pirates”: Nan sees the Duke for the first time coming out of the water after swimming – well, the demonstration of his ass is not far off. Apparently, series showrunner Katherine Jakeways grew up dreaming of Darcy bathing – well, let’s accept the bathing scene as an established template for new Victorian TV series.
“Buccaneers” was first filmed in 1995 with the participation of Carla Gugino (Nan) and Mira Sorvino (Conchita), but critics greeted the English TV movie coldly: it was based on the 1993 edition, for which writer Marion Mainwaring expanded the plot of the unfinished novel to romantic happy ending – which was unusual in Wharton’s work. The current film adaptation also embroiders on the classical canvas as it wants, but this gag looks cute, intelligent and charming – and, judging by the finale, the series is even getting a second season.
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