The Buccaneers Season 2 Leans Into the Series’ Soapiest Tendencies (For Both Good and Ill)

In many ways, period dramas have always been fancy soap operas. For all the lavish settings and prestige trimmings, half of our interest in shows like The Gilded Age or The Crown stems from our desire to fully indulge in the excesses of how the historical elite live, usually with a healthy dose of romance on top. Apple TV+’s The Buccaneers leans harder into this idea than most, turning its adaptation of Edith Wharton’s final novel into a loud, noisy, wildly colorful explosion of youthful, messy exuberance that the residents of Downton Abbey would almost certainly turn up their noses at. The series is unapologetic about the fact that it’s a story about and for women. It does its best to make a space for female experiences and desires that aren’t simply about finding a man with a sizeable estate to marry. It’s hard not to love it for that.

But where The Buccaneers’ first season managed to find a balance between romance and the coming-of-age stories of the young women at its center, its second outing often struggles to figure out what it’s trying to say and where it’s trying to take their stories. Part of the reason for this is that there’s simply too much going on at any given moment, and the show bulldozes through plot twists and emotional about-faces seemingly without considering whether these specific characters might actually make any of the choices we’re seeing onscreen. Events unfold at a positively breakneck pace, with what would be weeks of story on almost any other series galloping past in the space of an hour. 

Secrets are kept and almost immediately revealed. Characters make life-altering decisions, only to renege on them an episode later. New relationships are forged, friends betray one another, lives are irrevocably altered, and feelings shift with what often feels like little more than a scene change. On the plus side, this results in some truly bonkers storytelling: episodes are propulsive and feel almost impossible to look away from. But it also means that some of the show’s twists don’t make a ton of narrative sense, or land with the emotional heft that they should. 

The series’ second season picks up moments from where its first left off. Nan (Kristine Frøseth) is now Duchess of Tintagel and married to Theo (Guy Remmers). Her sister Jinny (Imogen Waterhouse) has fled England to escape her abusive husband, with some help from her sister’s other love interest, Guy Thwarte (Matthew Broome), who has gone along with her simply because Nan asked him to. Nan’s still not 100% sure Theo is the husband she truly wanted, but she’s determined to make their marriage work, with a little help and some duchess-in-training guidance from her icy mother-in-law (Amelia Bullmore). Still reeling from their newly reduced financial circumstances, Conchita (Alisha Boe) and Richard (Josh Dylan) start a side hustle that sees them turn to matchmaking for profit, Lizzy (Aubri Ibrag) finally meets a nice man (Jacob Ifan), and Mabel (Josie Totah) and Honoria (Mia Threapleton) attempt to figure out what an actual relationship between them in the real world looks like. 

The Buccaneers remains as gorgeous as ever, full of expansive landscapes, lavish costumes—a Midsummer Night’s Dream-themed party is a particular stunner—and a soundtrack bursting with anachronistic pop hits (Chappell Roan!). The seemingly endless parade of balls, garden parties, and luncheon soirees is tons of fun, and the overall experience of watching the show has never been more entertaining, like a novel whose pages you can’t keep turning, just to see what will happen next.