Summary
The Buccaneers is back for Season 2, but despite the same lavish production design and costuming, Episode 1 suggests a much darker story.
The tone of The Buccaneers is immediately different when Season 2 begins, and you can tell it’s going to stay that way. Apple TV+’s gilded coming-of-age drama has taken a darker turn, and is arguably growing up a little too fast in Episode 1, “The Duchess of Tintagel”, where the sort-of happy ending of Season 1 gives way to the emotional reality of choices and their consequences.
In case you don’t recall – it has been a couple of years, after all – the first outing concluded with Nan becoming the Duchess of Tintagel by marrying Theo, despite not being in love with him. It was a calculated play to allow her sister Jinny to escape an abusive relationship with Lord Seadown, but it’s now something that she has to live with. And the demands of being a duchess are intense. While she knows that the title will allow her to assist her “mother” – more on the dramatic use of quotes here in a moment – in divorcing her father and help keep Jinny on the lam, Nan’s essentially trapped in a relationship she isn’t committed to, being endlessly frustrated by her inability to affect any real change in her or her loved ones’ circumstances, and to make matters worse her own parentage is causing dramas behind the scenes.
This is the stuff that’s of immediate concern in the Season 2 premiere, with focus primarily resting on Nan’s predicament and the revelation that her birth mother is really her mother’s sister, Nelle (Leighton Meester), who was taken to bed by Tracy in not altogether above-board circumstances when she was around Nan’s age. Nelle gets a good amount of screen time in Episode 1, blowing into town as essentially a stranger to Nan but a reminder of painful memories for Patti – not just her husband’s most egregious infidelity, but a long-held secret that is threatening to reveal itself, especially since Nelle immediately takes a shine to Nan.
Kristine Frøseth and Leighton Meester in The Buccaneers Season 2 | Image via Apple TV+
Returning fans will surely notice that there isn’t a great deal that’s light-hearted about this premiere. Kristine Froseth is very good in it, saddled with the weight of pressing anxiety that is generally invisible, meaning she has to play it subtly while trying to fulfill her new obligations. Genuine outbursts are few and far between; a late, albeit minor confrontation with Lord Seadown is the closest we get to explicit conflict. Everything else is implied, yelled about behind closed doors, and tabled for later. That feeling of inertia that Nan is experiencing comes across well, punctuated by sudden lurches this way and that.
But it’s undeniably a different vibe from the first season, with the core cast unavoidably pulled apart, their relationships strained by new responsibilities and expectations. At least here in Episode 1 The Buccaneers Season 2 feels like less of an ensemble and more a character study, with Nan hogging most of the focus and Patti and Nelle playing a back-up act. I would argue that the latter pairing is most emblematic of the show’s underlying ideas, though. Meester’s brilliant in a handful of scenes, highlighting how the era strong-armed her into abandoning her own daughter lest a man’s reputation be damaged. She wears a great deal of pain on her sleeve, and the moment when Patti does her the favour of implying her relationship with Nan by revealing that they fell out exactly 19 years ago is a nice crowd-pleasing one.
If nothing else, Season 2 looks just as good, if not better, than Season 1. The production design and costuming are lavish, and there’s a particularly great moment towards the end of Episode 1 when Nan realizes that she can do her bit to draw attention away from Jinny’s disappearance by stealing the headlines for herself. This constitutes turning up for a party in the most show-stopping red number possible, letting the outfits and the music do the heavy lifting. I’d expect more time spent with Jinny and Guy to also offer up an aesthetic change, which would be welcome with the premiere feeling perhaps a little too contained.
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