Doing for pirates what What We Do In The Shadows did for vampires, Our Flag Means Death has officially won us over into its salty crew of seadogs.
The comedy series stars Flight of the Conchords standout Rhys Darby as a foppish 1717 aristocrat who spontaneously decides to turn to a life of piracy. If you (rightfully) reckon it could make you laugh, the only place to watch is on BINGE, where season one of Our Flag Means Death is currently streaming.
There’s plenty of recognisable character actors amongst the priggish captain Stede Bonnet’s crew: Joel Fry, Nat Faxon, Kristin Nairn, Ewen Bremner, Matthew Maher, and the wonderful Claudia O’Doherty as Bonnet’s abandoned wife.
Leslie Jones, Fred Armisen, Nick Kroll, and producer Taika Waititi also show up as pirate adversaries, with Waititi and Darby setting aside their cutlasses to chat in the video below. Darby goes into the fascinating true history of his character, a man who “had everything he’s ever wanted, and then snuck out in the middle of the night, left his wife and kids…real hero.”
Our review of the series from critic Dominic Corry celebrated the uniquely Kiwi comedy style that continues to dominate the world, mostly thanks to Waititi’s surprising pop culture ubiquity since Thor: Ragnarok.
“It’s a genuine novelty to see Darby channelling a certain kind of New Zealandness, accent and all, at the centre of a proper big budget American TV show…At one point, Blackbeard says to Bonnet: “You’ve got it all sussed out, don’t you?”, which is about as Kiwi a turn of phrase as I can imagine.
Corry continued, “God bless Taika and friends, these guys are breaking down NZ cultural cringe one project at a time.” A worthwhile mission to take to the high seas of streaming, methinks.
