Stede Bonnet’s midlife crisis didn’t involve a trophy wife or a red convertible. He became a pirate.
“Our Flag Means Death,” premiering Thursday on HBO Max, follows real-life pirate Bonnet, the 1700s so-called “Gentleman Pirate,” a wealthy aristocrat in Barbados who ditches his family, buys a ship and hires his own crew of misfits. At some point, Bonnet draws the attention of Blackbeard.
It’s a muddled story, much lost to time. For creator David Jenkins, that was part of the appeal: he got to fill in the blanks.
“It’s an impossibly decadent midlife crisis,” Jenkins told the Daily News. “Someone who feels so stuck in their life that they do something unbelievable.”
Born into a wealthy English family in Barbados, Bonnet decided to turn to piracy in the summer of 1717. He bought a sailing vessel, called it Revenge, and went on his plundering ways. After being arrested and charged with two acts of piracy, Bonnet was sentenced to death and hanged in 1718.
Jenkins compared “Our Flag Means Death” to “Breaking Bad,” the story of high school chemistry teacher Walter White who started manufacturing meth only to blow it all up as a last resort.
The problem, though, is that Bonnet is remarkably bad at being a pirate.
“He thought, ‘I’m going to just go be a criminal as a rumspringa or a little vacation,’” Jenkins said.
At its heart, Jenkins said, “Our Flag Means Death” is a workplace comedy, if you just swap out cubicles for a pirate ship. There’s an incompetent boss in Bonnet, played by New Zealand comedian Rhys Darby, employees who really should just find new jobs but are similarly too incompetent to leave, and a literal feeling of being adrift in an endless sea.
And then there’s Blackbeard.
The notorious English pirate’s involvement was more of a mystery, an unfathomable friendship between the most feared pirate on the seas and a relative newcomer searching for excitement. This iteration of Blackbeard, played by New Zealand filmmaker and actor Taika Waititi, is more intrigued than impressed, like watching a monkey at the zoo rather than a colleague to learn from.
“He’s an idiot, but also there’s something that he’s doing that’s subversive and revolutionary,” Jenkins told The News. “There’s something about this guy that Blackbeard sees. It’s still fun for him. He still likes doing it.”
At the same time, Bonnet’s newfound passion is a cowardly escape from his past, leaving a wife and kid at home to pursue his childish delights.
“He’s a benign narcissist,” Jenkins said. “You’re trying to find a way to like him after what he did to his family, and you’re rooting for a midlife crisis on some level, which is weird, but there’s a price to pay for these things. Nothing goes unrewarded or unpunished.”
Most of the time, you’re laughing at Bonnet, not with him. Blackbeard is laughing, too. But Bonnet believes he can be the best, as one must do to chase such foolhardy dreams.
For every gender equality or class issue “Our Flag Means Death” covers, there’s a ridiculous character played by Leslie Jones or Fred Armisen to remind viewers that this is not a serious world. And Stede Bonnet is not a serious man.
“When you get bored,” Jenkins joked, “you can just blow something up because you’re working in the pirate genre.”
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