“Our Flag Means Death” could have been one such production. Instead, it has been ingeniously crafted to give its audience not only what it wants, but what some have never let themselves dream of seeing.
A shockingly good bait-and-switch, the HBO Max series starts out brightly enough as a pirate comedy full of slapstick violence. Based loosely on the true story of a member of the landed gentry named Stede Bonnet who had a midlife crisis, deserted his family and became a “gentleman pirate” in the 18th century, the show sets up Stede (Rhys Darby) as a big-hearted fool with a crew ready to mutiny at the drop of his hankie. That the crew happens to be made up of a wide range of ethnicities, sexual orientations and gender identities is certainly welcome, but initially the proceedings are all very silly. Once the dread pirate Blackbeard joins the party, however, the HBO series morphs into so much more. (Avast, spoilers ahead.)
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