What if two real-life 18th-century pirate captains didn’t just cross paths, but fell in love? That’s the slow-burning premise of “Our Flag Means Death,” the HBO Max comedy series that premiered last month starring Rhys Darby as the blundering gentleman pirate Stede Bonnet and Taika Waititi as the fearsome Blackbeard, with a resplendent head of hair and beard to match.
Leaning heavily on creative license and a loose interpretation of history, the show, from creator David Jenkins, is fueled by a euphoric sense of the absurd: Part action-adventure, part rom-com, part workplace comedy. It is at once ridiculous and grounded in vulnerability, and tonally it has a lot in common with the TV adaptation of Waititi’s vampire comedy “What We Do in the Shadows.” There is blood and violence, but also desire and implied sex happening on this ship of fools. The crew on board Bonnet’s vessel, the Revenge, is more racially diverse than your average white-collar office staff, and it’s a detail that tracks with what we actually know; it’s estimated that a third of the pirates during this period were former slaves.
They’re led by a man who is indeed a silly fop and a wealthy dilettante, but the adorable Bonnet treats them better than most pirate captains: Paying them wages rather than relying on whatever bounty they plunder (a good thing since they plunder so little) and reading them bedtime stories before everyone turns in for the night. Even so, the crew is on the verge of mutiny.
