The Good Lord Bird: Ethan Hawke’s John Brown Is an Emmy-Worthy Fireball

John Brown was the first man executed for treason in American history. Fittingly, the American institution he was actually showing disloyalty to was slavery. The practice so deeply tied to the foundation of the United States so offended him that he raided Harpers Ferry, forged a new vision for the government, and put together a plan to ruin the South’s economy through liberation. Showtime’s seven-episode limited series The Good Lord Bird, from Blumhouse Television and based on James McBride’s National Book Award winner of the same name, is a rollicking ride to the Civil War dominated by Ethan Hawke, dark humor, and mixed successes.

Plenty of amusing historical asides (like the existence of an anti-slavery coalition with the superheroic name of the Secret Six) find their way into the amusing series, razzling and dazzling the scrappy tale with ornaments. It’s the kind of tone that, if it wasn’t at least partially backed up by history, would have the Coen brothers and Tarantino wrestling over what kind of gag to put in next. Sometimes it’s too much, like an overseasoned meal, with chapter titles popping up or on-the-nose musical cues overwhelming the screen.

But the pivotal element of The Good Lord Bird is its appraisal of Brown, and Hawke’s subsequent portrayal. Brown’s a colorful character who’s gone through the historical wringer. The hardline, violent activist was certain that the South wouldn’t give up slavery without a fight. He was right. That means that racist Southerners who spent decades pushing the “Lost Cause” and other revisionist narratives to the Civil War really, really weren’t fans of Brown. Depictions of him painted him as a maniac, a zealot, or otherwise “off”—descriptors that helped further split the assessment of the liberator down party lines.

So how do you capture eccentricities and flaws in a funny caricature without feeding into a damaging depiction of a man whose intense desire to end slavery has been conflated with madness? Well, if you’re The Good Lord Bird, which clearly isn’t here for historiography, you don’t. The series, co-created (and partially written) by Hawke with Mark Richard (who co-wrote its entirety), gives us a Bible-thumper whose abolitionist idealism is just another stubborn aspect of an over-the-top fervor. His odd obsessions and personal blinders—shown initially by his insistent belief that Henry Shackleford AKA Onion (Joshua Caleb Johnson) is actually a girl named Henrietta—turn the anti-slavery revolutionary into a bumbling zealot…who despite it all manages to be pretty goddamn righteous.

Through the eyes of the fictional Henry (and Johnson’s fine fish-out-of-water performance that’s strange gender politics deserve an essay of their own to unpack) we get a deadpan, on-the-ground observation of Brown and his antics. But the series’ more trenchant criticisms don’t rely on silliness. Brown and other white abolitionists, for all their good intentions, speak over and/or assume the desires of Black people. Tying condescension and paternalism to religious fervor isn’t a hard ask, especially when racism is involved. But that’s not crazy. That’s just white liberalism. A few touching scenes in the finale gives agency and oomph to the cause beyond Brown’s devotion.

Those that stayed awake in U.S. History know the miniseries was always going to end in tragedy, and it’s a transition the series mostly pulls off on the strength of the direction and Hawke’s emotionally all-encompassing commitment. And that performance is THE selling point for the show.