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While The Buccaneers will draw many comparisons to Netflix’s Bridgerton, director Susanna White says “it’s nice to be compared with Bridgerton as it’s so phenomenally popular, but the ambition was never to make something like it.” Both series are based on books, yet The Buccaneers is set in the United States’ Gilded Age of the 1870s as well as England while Bridgerton is set in England’s Regency era of the early 1800s.

Both shows have amazing soundtracks. Bridgerton uses string quartet arrangements of music by artists; Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, and Billie Eilish, while The Buccaneers features the actual song by the artist. Some songs include “Long Live (Taylor’s Version)” by Taylor Swift, “Cedar” by Gracie Abrams, and “Want Want” by Maggie Rogers.

By using the actual version of an artist’s song and skipping the string quartet version, it “follows in the steps of gleefully anachronistic period pieces like Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, which keeps it from being stuffy even when it has roughly a thousand affairs of the heart it needs to answer to (Nick Allen, “Apple TV+’s The Buccaneers Shakes Up High Society”).”

The Buccaneers is based on Edith Wharton’s unfinished novel and stars, Kristine Frøseth, Alisha Boe, Josie Totah, Matthew Broome, Aubri Ibrag, Mia Threapleton, Imogen Waterhouse, and Guy Remmers.

Max Goldbart of Deadline writes, “The Buccaneers charts goings-on in the late 19th century as a group of fun-loving young American girls explode into the tightly corseted London season, kicking off an Anglo-American culture clash as the land of the stiff upper lip is infiltrated by a refreshing disregard for centuries of tradition. Sent to secure husbands and titles, their hearts are set on much more than that, and saying ‘I do’ is just the beginning.”

Even though Edith Wharton did not finish writing her novel, The Buccaneers, due to her death in 1937, Marion Mainwaring finished the novel in 1993 based on Wharton’s detailed outline. Although the show seemed to drag in some parts, I liked the story and look forward to listening to it on audiobook. The ending of the show strays away from the book ending so I’m interested to see how they are different. If you have Apple TV+ be sure to check it out!