Critic Reviews

The Buccaneers has its flaws, but those flaws become easier to forgive the more you spend time with it and realize it knows exactly what it is and isn't afraid to show it.

The Buccaneers is still incredibly watchable. The characters are endearing, the story never drags, and, despite the tropes, it often chooses to zag where we might expect it to zig (especially in its heart-shattering finale).

It’s true, this isn’t your mother’s Buccaneers. And as adaptations go, it doesn’t bear much resemblance to the 1996 miniseries of the same name or, for that matter, the specifics of Wharton’s novel. But, much like the girls at its center, it’s awfully hard not to find yourself swept up in their loud, unapologetic good time.

Purists might recoil at the soundtrack, the slang and the sexiness, but all in all this is a fabulous way to reintroduce Wharton to the world. Especially when compared to Julian Fellowes’s lavish but dreadfully dull The Gilded Age, here is a period drama that has managed to hit the sweet spot between modern whimsy and actual intellect.

A frenzied and delightful examination of the culture clash between American and British aristocracy. It also showcases how women have always sought to save themselves and each other while lacking societal powers or autonomy.

While The Buccaneers also explores matters of race, it mainly focuses on these young American women overcoming sexual assault, violence, and humiliation from a horde of royal elites. Ultimately, it’s a feminist manifesto for girls eager to find love and adventure, free of the restraints of traditional society. But particularly, it’s that scene in the opening episode where five gals clink their glasses ahead of Conchita’s wedding that resonates the most: We always come first.

If the Netflix drama was a blushing bride dreaming of happily ever after, The Buccaneers might be her worldlier cousin — more skeptical and more pragmatic, but with an intriguing sharpness that feels all her own.

It is also largely a romcom rather than a fully Whartonly astute piece of social and proto-feminist commentary. But we are allowed some nonsense now and again, and there is nothing more joyfully restorative than when it is done as well as it is here. It is enormous fun without being unresonant with today’s concerns.

Though the performances overall can sometimes be a bit rough due to such a casual, modern approach to dialogue, “The Buccaneers” prevails with its equally giddy and righteous depiction of women realizing high society isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

Ms. Frøseth, who carries most of the dramatic weight of "The Buccaneers," and whose character is most divorced from the marriage-minded obsessions of her fellow New Yorkers, is first-rate, as are Josie Totah and Aubri Ibrag as Mabel and Lizzy Elmsworth, the members of the female quintet that comes to conquer Great Britain.