Last year’s first season of Our Flag Means Death unfurled a big surprise. Made for HBO Max in the US and picked up by the BBC, it was a pirate comedy loosely based on 18th-century pirate history. It starred Kiwi comedy chums Rhys Darby and Taika Waititi as pirate captains Stede Bonnet and Blackbeard. The former was the bored aristocrat-turned-swanky swashbuckler who ran his ship with an oddly empathetic management style. The latter – a rare lead acting role for Waititi, who usually just cameos in his films – was the hirsute psycho of the high seas.
The two were set sailing on a collision course. One was sure to wind up on the end of the other’s cutlass … except well, surprise, they fell not on their swords but for each other.
After a shaky start in which a voluble Darby chewed up too much of the scenery, the left-field love story made the show into something of a gay nautical Blackadder.
It was helped by creator David Jenkins’ juggling act of romcom silliness and scurvy black comedy – his writers included the creator of 2022 NZ Jewish sitcom Kid Sister, Simone Nathan – and an ensemble brimming with character. Among the motley crew were our own Dave Fane and English character actor Con O’Neill putting his sandpaper voice to good use as Blackbeard’s ruthless first mate, who finds he’s not his first mate any more.
The show’s queer turn helped give it a word-of-mouth, online following that made a second season renewal inevitable, as did the non-fairytale ending of series one in which Stede and Blackbeard were separated. The toff returned to his country estate and to a wife who thought he was long dead and finding solace in her grief with Doug, her art tutor. A heartbroken Blackbeard returned to being an even meaner brigand.
For the second season, production shifted from Los Angeles to Auckland (thanks, screen-production rebate), which inevitably means more scenery (Piha provides a From Here to Eternity snogging-in-the-surf moment early in the series) and more familiar faces.
Among the local guest stars are Madeleine Sami, Erroll Shand, Anapela Polataivao, Maaka Pohatu (Far North, Wellington Paranormal), Rachel House and the ubiquitous Mark Mitchinson. Among the new imports are Minnie Driver – who, like Darby and Mitchinson, also appears in the local feature Uproar – playing another based-on-fact pirate, Anne Bonny, for a mid-season episode.
The early instalments of the second season suggest the show is working just as well as a proper if unconventional love story as the opposites-attract poop-deck romcom it started out as.
It’s still a quippy, toxic workplace satire for many of those supporting characters. But for the two leads, their second outing performances help make an otherwise very silly show seriously entertaining. It just might be the best acting the duo have done in a very long time. Darby, in particular, finds new depths to his character (in a word: mermaid).
It seems they now have their sea legs and, despite the workplace accident risks of the place and period, there’s not a wooden limb among them.
