Apple TV+ Orders a Series Based on Edith Wharton's 'The Buccaneers'
In recent months, Apple TV+ has slowly been upping its game regarding British and British-adjacent streaming content with shows like Slow Horses, Trying, and Ted Lasso (which feels made for Anglophiles, even if it's technically American.) The Tom Hiddleston-led The Essex Serpent was its first foray into period storytelling, an atmospheric tale of faith and superstition set in Victorian England. But now, the streamer is set to adapt what most of us would consider a traditional costume drama, greenlighting a new series based on Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edith Wharton's final unfinished novel, The Buccaneers.
The story revolves around five wealthy and ambitious American girls and their families who aim to snag titled English gentlemen who are hunting for rich wives to fund their estates. (This is essentially the story behind the marriage of Downton Abbey's Robert and Cora Crawley, in case anyone has forgotten, who initially wed because he needed her fortune.) The Buccaneers' story will also likely be familiar to Masterpiece fans, thanks to the 1995 BBC miniseries starring Carla Gugino, Alison Elliott, Rya Kihlstedt, and Mira Sorvino.
Given the popularity of glitzy period series like HBOs's The Gilded Age and Netflix's Bridgerton, it makes sense that Apple would want a successful and potentially long-running costume drama franchise of its own. And The Buccaneers is a natural choice, given that it's a setting and premise that viewers will be intimately familiar with, thanks to other series set in roughly the same period. It's also a story that hasn't been done to death either, which makes for a nice change, and Apple's willingness to spend serious money on its programs means it will likely be full to bursting with gorgeous sets and lush costumes.
