‘The Buccaneers’ Creator Hopes Edith Wharton “Would Have Approved” of Apple TV+’s Dreamy New Adaptation

Apple TV+‘s latest delightfully anachronistic period drama is a revolutionary new take on Edith Wharton’s final, unfinished novel, The Buccaneers. The story follows a group of American heiresses who travel to England during the height of the Gilded Age to marry blue blooded British aristocrats in need of new money. This latest version of the story uses Bridgerton-esque modern needle drops and candy-pop colors to lean into the soapier aspects of the author’s story, which might make some fans of Wharton feel as out of place as a rambunctious New Yorker at a royal ball. Still, Buccaneers creator and showrunner Katherine Jakeways insists the spirt of Wharton’s original manuscript is what drives the new Apple TV+ series.

“It’s a book that people are very fond of, of course, and Edith Wharton is so beloved that I do feel a responsibility and I hope that people feel the spirit of this is something she would have approved of,” Jakeways told Decider recently.

Apple TV+’s The Buccaneers opens on Conchita Closson’s (Alisha Boe) wedding day. The beautiful biracial American heiress is supposed to marry the handsome Lord Richard Marable (Josh Dylan), providing a picture perfect happily ever after to a whirlwind transatlantic romance. Supporting Conchie are her four best friends (and fellow “New Money” maidens): Virgina “Jinny” St. George (Imogen Waterhouse), Lizzy Elmsworth (Aubri Ibrag), Mabel Elmsworth (Josie Totah), and the show’s narrator, Annabel “Nan” St. George (Kristine Froseth). As Nan explains, the whole world feels jealous of Conchita, but that’s only because they don’t know she is already pregnant with Lord Richard’s baby and the groom is AWOL on the big day.

Wharton’s novel explored the loss of innocence that a generation of American heiresses, colloquially known as “the Buccaneers,” experienced when they pursued their own happy endings across the pond, only for the bulk of them to be locked in loveless marriages. Their fabulous estates became gilded cages and their family’s money kept the (mostly thankless) English aristocracy afloat through the early 20th century.

The Buccaneers definitely puts its five heroines through the wringer, exposing them to varying degrees of abuse and degradation, but it maintains a blithe touch in its storytelling that might surprise fans of the original novel. Nevertheless, Katherine Jakeways says the book was her primary source of inspiration.

“We wanted to keep [Wharton’s] spirit, really,” Jakeways said. “I mean, it’s an unfinished novel. The first third of the book, I think, is beautifully written and written in lots of detail. She would have done the requisite number of drafts on it. The characters are beautifully put onto the page already and already feel very modern, actually. And the sort of spirit of [the show] is all very much from what Edith Wharton has put on the page.”

“After that, the rest of the book becomes sort of slightly more ‘first draft-y,’ I think, or sort of early draft-y, anyway. Because presumably she’s sort of found out she wasn’t going to be able to finish it, which I always feel very sad about for her sake. And I felt big responsibility to get it right for her.”

Jakeways isn’t the first writer to try to get an adaptation of The Buccaneers right. In 1995, Maggie Wadey was asked to adapt the book for the BBC and PBS’s Masterpiece. At the time, she was criticized for including themes such as homosexuality and for giving heroine Nan St. George (then played by Carla Gugino) a happy “Hollywood” ending. Almost thirty years later, Jakeways is also incorporating queer storylines and embracing the romance of the book. Still, she maintains Wharton’s trademark darkness is still in the Apple TV+ series.

“Of course, there is darkness in the series that we’ve made. Absolutely, there’s heartbreak,” she said. “Our intention was certainly was to put relationships into the show which are feel quite modern in terms of the themes that we’re able to talk about now to without giving anything away.”

After listing a few spoiler-y storylines for The Buccaneers Season 1, Jakeways said these are “all relationships that would have been happening forever and for hundreds and hundreds of years, but they wouldn’t necessarily have had the language to sort of speak about them and unpack them in the way that we now can.”

As someone who loves literature as much as I love bold television adaptations, I drank all eight episodes of The Buccaneers Season 1 up. While I’m unsure it works as well as an Edith Wharton adaptation as much as, say, Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece The Age of Innocence, Apple TV+’s The Buccaneers is an incredible addition to the canon of period soap operas. The last time I gleefully binged so quickly through screeners for a new historic drama, it was a little PBS show called Sanditon.

Jakeway’s take on The Buccaneers might not be for Edith Wharton purists, but it definitely should be top of the list for fans of romantic, soapy period dramas like the aforementioned Sanditon, Bridgerton, and Downton Abbey.

“We do have darkness and we do have moments of drama in the show, but the beating heart of the show is those girls and the relationship between the friends. The sort of spirit that they have and their sort of wild energy and enthusiasm for life, which was absolutely as Edith Warton intended,” Jakeways said. “I hope that that’s come across and I hope she would approve.”

The first three episodes of The Buccaneers is now streaming on Apple TV+. New episodes will premiere weekly on Wednesdays between now and December 13.