What To Expect From ‘The Buccaneers’ TV Show Based on Edith Wharton’s Book – Armessa Movie News

Edith Wharton‘s novel The Buccaneers has been adapted into a series for Apple TV+ and will premiere on November 8. The series will certainly be compared to Sanditon, the much-beloved Jane Austen adaptation whose third season aired earlier this year on PBS and BritBox. Both are historical romance novels written by literary icons. More specifically, The Buccaneers, just like Sanditon, was not completed at the time of the author’s death. But Austen only finished a few chapters of Sanditon – the series departs from her story almost immediately – whereas Wharton finished about three fifths of The Buccaneers, which was published in its unfinished state after she died and is often considered one of her best novels. Read on for more of what to expect from Apple TV+’s The Buccaneers.

Edith Wharton Was a Product of Gilded Age New York City

Edith Wharton was born to a family of wealth and connections in New York City in 1862 and grew up during the time that came to be known as the Gilded Age – a term coined by Mark Twain – due to the era’s noticeable wealth inequality. “Gilding” is just a superficial coating of precious metal over something considered less valuable; the extremely wealthy of that time, who lived fabulously while others labored, was the gilding. Nevertheless, these days the term really only evokes the lives of the upper crust, rather than the contrast between rich and poor. In fact, the economic contrast that is most strongly associated with the Gilded Age is between old and new money. Families whose inherited fortunes have been passed down for generations, and those who have only just struck it rich during the boom of industrialization and finance.

Wharton is known for her writing about this period, which sets her work apart from Austen’s work, and from romance novels like Bridgerton, which are set earlier in the 19th century, during the Regency era. Wharton’s best-known novels are The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, both of which have been adapted into feature films (directed by Terence Davies, who died last week, and Martin Scorsese, respectively). Wharton began writing when she was a teenager. However, her family discouraged her from pursuing it, and her first poems and stories were all published under pseudonyms. The time was known for its rigid social rules, especially for old-money families, and especially for women. Wharton spent her youth abiding by the rules of the society she was born into and allowed herself to become enveloped in a confining marriage. The times changed and Wharton changed with them. She published The House of Mirth in 1905, in her forties, and from there enjoyed a career as a well-respected writer. She divorced her first husband, lived mainly in Europe, won the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence, spent World War I reporting on the war in France, and hung out with all the literary stars of her day. She died in Italy in 1937, leaving The Buccaneers unfinished.

In ‘The Buccaneers,’ Five Young American Women Seek Love in England

The Buccaneers is set in the 1870s when Wharton was a child. The plot revolves around Annabelle “Nan” St. George. Nan is the younger of two daughters in a family that has become newly wealthy on the stock market. Her mother is overwhelmed by New York society and has no idea how to get her daughters invited to the balls and galas where matches are made. She hires a British governess, Laura Testvalley, to “finish” Nan, and Laura comes up with the idea of an expedition to England for Nan, her sister Virginia, and three other girls from new money families. There, the five will be matched to cash-strapped members of the British aristocracy. In these marriages of utility, everyone gets something they need. Money for status.

The novel then follows the five girls through their courtships and marriages in Britain. Nan finds herself torn between two men Guy Thwaite, son of a baronet, and the Duke of Tintagel. Wharton explores the cultural clashes between the free-spirited Americans and the British aristocrats, bound by strict social codes. Through it all is the guidance of Laura Testvalley. Wharton is frank that to Laura, being a governess is just a job, and that she needs the money desperately. Still, Laura is such a professional, and genuinely cares for her charges, that she does carry a whiff of Mary Poppins (P.L. Travers had just created the character three years prior, in 1934). But Laura also has her secrets.

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Apple TV+ Gives ‘The Buccaneers’ a Modern Gloss

In the Apple TV+ adaptation of The Buccaneers, Nan will be played by Kristine Froseth (Sharp Stick). Christina Hendricks plays her mother, trapped in a dismal marriage to a charming but unfaithful charlatan. Imogen Waterhouse plays elder sister Virginia St. George, and the Buccaneers are rounded out by Josie Totah and Aubri Ibrag as sisters Mabel and Elizabeth Elmsworth, and Alisha Boe as Conchita Closson.

The series was created by Katharine Jakeways, who heads an all-female creative team. The episodes are each directed by Susannah White, who directed the Aldhani episodes of Andor. Based on the trailer, they’ve set the novel in the past but given it a slightly more modern attitude. The American girls encountering England sometimes seem to be reacting to it as if they are time travelers from 2023. “What actually is a Duchess?” one of the Buccaneers asks. Adapting The Buccaneers will be somewhat tricky, as the novel remains unfinished. It was originally published along with Wharton’s detailed outline, projecting how she thought it would end. In 1993, Marion Mainwaring, a Wharton scholar, wrote an ending for the novel, based on those notes, but the results received bad reviews. Mainwaring herself didn’t seem to love the book all that much. Responding to accusations that she had defaced a classic, she said “Edith Wharton was not at her stylistic best here; that made it easier for me.”

The Buccaneers has also been adapted once before, for the BBC in 1995, with Carla Gugino (now terrorizing the nouveau riche Usher family on Netflix) as Nan, and MIra Sorvino as her fellow buccaneer Conchita. This version was also criticized for inventing a happy ending for Nan. Wharton wasn’t known for happy endings, to put it mildly, so this was seen as a betrayal of her spirit. And yet, even though Wharton’s The Buccaneers criticizes the oppressive social code of the Gilded Age, it’s unmistakably a gentler, more comedic, story than her other work. Wharton was trying something new, and in giving The Buccaneers a new tone, the Apple TV+ show may have solved how to make the transition into the missing ending more seamless. Though the show’s idea of success might involve several seasons, and so the ending might not come for many years.