The Buccaneers

Everything about this lush mini-series is wrong, oversimplified, anachronistic, and just plain dishonest. Yet the results are strangely irresistible. The cast is what makes the difference. Mira Sorvino, Carla Gugino, Alison Eliot, and Rya Kihlstedt -- four utterly gorgeous young starlets, all of whom showed enormous promise, none of whom really topped their mid Nineties peak.

Imagine Charlie's Angels in corsets and lace, running here and there with fluttering lashes and heaving bosoms, determined to marry well or bust a bodice. And boy, do they ever! You will not believe the amount of leering sexuality in every scene, like a bad Seventies late night soap. Yet it's all so touchingly innocent, as if in every scene you can here the young actresses telling themselves, "This is culture! This is culture! Oscars await! It's CULTURE!"

To balance out the titillating sleaze, of course, the writers are very careful to make every last eligible bachelor an utter bucket of manure. Such a bold choice! Such intellectual daring it must have taken, to cop a fashionable feminist attitude and just slap it right down in the middle of the soft-core porn worship of all those country houses and heaving bosoms and bursting bodices and corsets laced tight. This is a story that preaches with shrill insistence while undercutting its own supposedly egalitarian message with childlike worship of money and social class.

Now when you read an actual, completed Edith Wharton novel, like THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY, you will notice some interesting differences between the actual Wharton genius and the goofiness of this guilty pleasure. Undine Spragg is a pretty girl, and she wants a rich husband. But Undine is never any better than the people around her. In a lot of ways she is worse! When Edith Wharton sends her to Europe the whole point is that she really is a menace to the civilization she wants to conquer. "You want the things we want but you don't understand why we want them," says an exasperated French count.

That kind of complexity is completely absent from THE BUCCANEERS. The girls are awesome just because, hey, they're GIRLS!!!

I paid almost 40 buckaroos for this PBS/BBC collaboration...and it was worth every red cent. What a treat...what a wonderful story...what amazing characters...and what a fantastic cast! Mira, Carla, James Frain, and Greg Wise are absolutely AWESOME. I love them all for making this mini such a delight. It's absorbing to the point that I was glued to my TV set till the very end. Mira's character (Conchita) is full of fire and has an amazingly kind heart...and her Brazilian accent is perfect. Carla wins your heart as the head-strong, and independent Nan (Annabelle). Greg Wise is great as the romantic and determined Guy Twaite. But, the best--to me--is James Frain's Julius, Duke of Trevenick. Julius is one of the most complex characters I've seen on a small or large screen in a very long time. He's a young man who feels immense love but is unable to express it adequately...and when frustrated by his emotions or by his young wife (Nan), he is prone to abusive behavior...that he later regrets. He is a product and victim of his times...a prisoner of his title and what is expected of him as a Duke. Carla's and James' chemistry was so wonderful that some how you hope they will be able to work things out in their difficult marriage. You see all the missed opportunities on the part of both Nan and Julius...opportunities that probably would have made their union a success. So, it's sad and rather tragic to see it all fall apart, when it really didn't have to. But, Julius and Nan are both VERY young...and ill equiped to overcome outside influences, or to fully realize the duties of their positions as Duke and Duchess of Trevenick. Julius is guilty of bad actions and heartless decisions, yet, at the same time, he is capable of sincere kindness and gentle-ness. He is a man torn between the past and it's restraints upon him and the present with it's promise of love and happiness if he would but only allow himself to feel and express it. Julius Trevenick is someone you love and hate at the same time.

All the characters are well drawn. All the cast is first-rate..and the story is extremely compelling. I believe Edith Wharton would be very proud.

Backdrop: In the latter half of the 1800's, America's New York was a rising industrial and financial giant. Many "old money" families like the Vanderbilt's and Astor's began to look to England to secure English titles to add to their prestige. Whereas, the "new moneyed" Americans denied admittance into New York society, also looked to England for a title and acceptance. On the other hand, where England was still a colonial power with extreme amounts of wealth in the hands of a few landed gentry, many of these landed English families were cash poor; thus paving the way for marriage alliances to be formed across the Atlantic.

The Story: Edith Wharton's unfinished novel, The Buccaneers takes place within these historical times, and portrays the hazards that develop when socially driven families manipulate and connive young minds through the use of duty, honor, title and wealth.

This BBC production is splendidly done, with grand costumes of the day, beautiful locations, and strong performances by the cast. One slight drawback is that several key characters seem to simply fade away within the story, so that the emotional investment is oddly lost and dismissed for three of the four girls halfway through the series.

The ending developed from Wharton's notes is satisfying, at the same time that it is unsettling. For true to the time, women's choices were difficult, and often crushing. Surprisingly, you may find that you'll think on this story long afterwards.

Seez, you seem to be very confused.

Edith Wharton and Jane Austen are two totally different authors. They both were women and both wrote socially-oriented novels, but that's about all they have in common.

Jane Austen was English. She lived from 1775 to 1817 and published only six books, two posthumously. The major theme of her books is genteel but impoverished young women trying to make advantageous marriages. She had nothing whatsoever to do with the story of The Buccaneers; she died 120 years before the book was written.

Edith Wharton was an American. A member of New York's old Society, she was born Edith Jones in 1862. She was married at age 23 to Teddy Wharton, a socially acceptable young man, but the union was not happy. She published her first book in 1900 and soon moved to France when she began to experience commercial success. She would spend much of the rest of her life in Europe, divorcing Teddy when he threatened to spend all her money, for as a best-selling author her income was large. Wharton's books center around the American social scene and the socially constricting expectations of that world; she usually portrays marriage as a sort of prison, as she herself experienced it. The Buccaneers (1937) was her last novel. She died before it was finished, but left an outline; it has actually been finished by several authors in several different versions based upon her notes.

And finally, it is not set in "the Regency period of English history" (that term refers specifically to the years 1811-1820). It is set in the 1870s.

The miniseries really belongs to Carla Gugino (Nan) whose story we follow and who grown from childish dreamer to a woman who can weigh the consequences of her actions. Mira Sorvino's accent is impeccable, and both Alison Elliot and Rya Kihlstedt are great. The tale of four American heiresses who trade themselves for a place in English society is bittersweet, but has the most upbeat ending of all of Wharton's works. Don't miss it.