Jenny Smith / 13 July 2025 / Categories: Movie and TV Shows, TV Show

The Buccaneers on Apple TV while I am on the subject of what to watch

Or not. Big Christina Hendricks Fan after Madmen so decided to give it a go

I cannot tell you who was in the new Apple TV historical drama series based on the unfinished work of literature The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton.

I found out about it watching Christina Hendricks on The One Show, something I caught by mistake and as a fan I was

Interested to find out what she was promoting. The Buccaneers was on my radar. I did my due diligence and to be honest the reviews were more good than bad. Even a review in the Guardian by Lucy Mangan someone I listen to for an objective viewpoint painted an appealing picture, a series offering “enormous fun for Bridgeton fans” and as I have only a couple of weeks left before I plan to stop my subscription of Apple TV (another snoop entirely as I have been paying £8.99 per month for 3 or 4 months without watching anything) I decided to give it a go for Saturday night viewing. I’d seen friends during the day. It had been brutally hot. Was knackered and fancied some good TV and an early night. The heat, a good old gossip and a few glasses at lunchtime had got the better of me.

I was excited to get my teeth into something new, light, fun, colourful, historical, classic. I thought the Buccaneers would be perfect for a bit of binge that could easily spill over into Sunday before work on Monday.

The reviews to be fair were very mixed and some people did describe the Buccaneers as “cringe worthy and historically inaccurate” but I listened to Lucy Mangan instead.

The opening scenes take you through a frenetic wedding preparation in a grand house, a bevy of young women, the brides attendants in bottle green taffeta making preparation for Conchi (Cordelia nuptials) flowers being delivered, amidst the obvious calamity of plans going arwy, we don’t know yet what has actually happened.

We meet Christina Hendricks character, the mother of the bride, in a fluster asking about the wellbeing of Conchi, the attendant in charge fobs her off to rush upstairs clearly with other more pressing matters to deal with like a missing groom.

I got as far as the pink poodle languishing on the bed when we enter Conchi’s bed chamber, what kind of name is that anyway. And we see the bride scantily clad in corset and stockings having a terminal breakdown, the dialogue script just wasn’t believable or credible for the period, cringe worthy for sure and the giant standard poodle dyed pink as a dog lover I honestly couldn’t cope with and immediately switched off.

I probably watched less than five minutes. Some who watched might say it gets better or you should have given it a chance. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to waste my evening on a dampened down crucified literary classic. It might be a great introduction to Edith Wharton if you are five years old but then the sexy content would probably be too much for a much younger audience so not sure who Apple think this drama series would actually appeal to.

Not me that’s for sure.