REVIEW: ‘The Buccaneers’ Season 2 Fails the Women It Thinks It’s Championing

The Buccaneers Season 2 is palatable – vaguely tolerable – as long as you don’t pay attention to the grating performances, the nonsensical storyline, and the vapid pandering to easy branding and girl-power shenanigans. A series that is tailor-made for TikTok fan edits and Bridgerton fans forced to scrape the barrel, chasing bodice-ripping induced highs (here’s plenty of better smut to be found than this), there is no joy nor sense of escapism here. The beautiful gowns remain beautiful. But they’re just as lovely on mute.

Our merry band of sleepwalking duchesses and high-society women return in The Buccaneers Season 2, either running from or grappling with the fallout of Season 1. After realizing the abuse her sister Jinny (Imogen Waterhouse) was suffering under her husband, Lord James Seadown (Barney Fishwick), Nan (Kristine Frøseth) puts aside her heart’s desire to be with Guy (Matthew Broome) and instead settles for the Duke, Theo (Guy Remmers) to offer safety and stability while Jinny and Guy run away.

Season 2 picks up immediately after the aforementioned events. Nan and Theo are married, the pregnant Jinny is out of James’s warpath, and the rest of the girls, including Conchita (Alisha Boe), Lizzy (Aubri Ibrag), and Mabel (Josie Totah), continue to try and find a place and station for themselves in an ever-changing world. Meanwhile, Leighton Meester arrives as Nell, a woman with an essential connection to Nan and Mrs. St George, played by Christina Hendricks.

There are some small victories in The Buccaneers Season 2. The aforementioned gowns truly are spectacular. The costuming, in general, hones in on period-specific detailing while being allowed to cut loose through narrative midsummer birthday parties and masquerade balls. Costume designer Kate Carin thrives with the Gilded Age styling, allowing the swaths of fabric and tactile textiles to produce the dramatic effect the performers lack. It’s easy to forgive the numerous shots of our heroines racing away from their latest problem when the billowing dresses and capes cast such luminous and striking silhouettes.

The Buccaneers Season 2 continues to fail its female characters. 

The score and the soundtrack, too, work well in immersing us in this pop-art spin on period dramas. Imitating the likes of films such as Marie Antoinette (or, again, Bridgerton), which marry traditional storytelling tropes with modern touches to paint an alluring, subversive tale, the goal is to remind us of the timeless touchstones of womanhood and female friendship. When two characters of the older generation allow themselves the freedom to dance and flirt to a Chappell Roan song, it bridges us and lets us understand their longing and desire.

It is also one of the best scenes of the entire series. However, that’s mainly due to the credible chemistry between the two actors and their lived-in, subtle performances.

The Buccaneers Season 2 even stumbles into decent plots, though it seems reticent to commit to its best ideas. Specific pairings and relationships allow characters to shine that didn’t when they were tied to Nan’s direct storyline. Jinny and Guy’s friendship as they deal with both running from lives they can’t return to while raising Jinny’s son is decently effective. Guy, in particular—aided by Matthew Broome being the only confident and comfortable actor in the younger-generation cast—is allowed pockets of charisma.

Only Matthew Broome shines in the new-generation cast. 

Some elements work. Some relationships hint at greater, untapped potential for the characters, even if the actors struggle to deliver present performances. But it’s all hindered by the series’ anchor —Nan—being so wildly intolerable, yet the sole focus on which the series orbits. What’s frustrating is that, in better hands, she could be intolerable yet enjoyable.

We love messy women in film and television. But The Buccaneers Season 2 can’t decide on just how to present her, and Frøseth lacks any presence to command the scenes she’s in. Like so much of her dialogue, it’s a whisper of a performance when her character, presumably, is meant to tower.

Despite the minor highlights, the series suffers from broad writing and rushed pacing. Momentary interactions inspire enormous, life-changing events. The love lives of these characters are tumultuous, in and of themselves, fine. But make us believe it. What is the point of romance if there’s no heat? Romances only work when the characters ignite and then carry the flame.

But the real issue is how much The Buccaneers strives to be more than romance; its earnest desire to be about something limits its ability to be anything. There’s plenty of worth in writing a period drama about feminist heroines who sought to change the narrative and find power, agency, and autonomy in a systemically bigoted and patriarchal society. But it’s also not new. So, if you’re aiming to be radical, which the series seems to be, then you need to push the envelope further. The series continues the trend of consumer-friendly branded feminism.

There’s no reason for the series to be so lifeless.

Instead, we’re stuck with slogans where men talk about how lucky we are to have women, which isn’t wrong, but it makes it evident in the storytelling, not the dialogue. I don’t particularly care if men think they’re lucky to have women, and the series is telling on itself if it’s meant to be a big, declarative moment. Instead, The Buccaneers Season 2 lets down the characters it’s meant to be championing with lazy plot devices and paper-thin characterization.

All of this would be fine if the series let itself be salacious and silly, sepia-tinted fun. Bring on the soap opera theatrics. There’s empowerment in those types of films and television series. There’s escapism. By being so self-serious, The Buccaneers crafts a series we wish to escape from, not to.

Add to that the unfathomable underutilization of Hendricks and Meester, and the series stumbles further. Meester is so good and electrifying in her very few scenes that it makes us wish the series could start all over and follow her from the start instead. She’s an example of a series and genre-defying actress who understands how to find depth in even the slightest characters.

The Buccaneers Season 2 achieves a few highs but far too many lows to make them worthwhile. With performances that straddle between too underplayed and overwrought and a weak script, the series fails to deliver on all that it promises. The frills and thrills laid up by drudgery and drear.

The Buccaneers Season 2 premieres June 18 on Apple TV+.