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The Buccaneers burst onto television screens with flair, although it was less deafening than Bridgerton's record-breaking debut, it was still quite uncomfortable. Apple TV+'s period drama adaptation of Edith Wharton's unfinished novel premiered and was immediately compared to Netflix's hit Bridgerton, but beyond that, the similarities end.
Disclaimer: This article contains the writer's opinion.
Though both programs are dressed in corsets, pearls, and swoony mess, the core of The Buccaneers is built on something quite different: dislocation, the boldness of American money, and women who refuse to shrink into a world that was never meant to hold them.
The Netflix show Bridgerton may have set expectations for 21st-century viewers about costume dramas, ballroom themes, orchestral Ariana Grande, dazzling diversity, and heroines with storybook love affairs. The Buccaneers, however, did not come to do the same. It arrived to challenge those expectations. It has a rebellious tone, rooted in the raw emotional experiences of five girls thrown into a world that doesn't accept them for who they are.
As comparisons become more vocal, one fact remains: Buccaneers is not attempting to keep pace with Bridgerton; it's on a completely different level.
Cultural contrast at its core
Beneath the surface of The Buccaneers lies a fundamentally transatlantic clash. These American heiresses, smart, forward, and coarse by British standards, find themselves immersed in the icy formalism of London society in the 1870s. It's not just a costume ball; it's an etiquette battle, a war over status and identity. While Bridgerton is set in a glamorized alternate reality with a racially diverse nobility and a focus on romantic fulfillment, The Buccaneers is grounded in real cultural tension. The conflict is not just visual; it's thematic.
This is a very precise setting for The Buccaneers. The women aren't just seeking husbands; they're seeking freedom. Nan, Conchita, and their men aren't there to flirt with dukes; their visit serves another purpose. That changes everything. The Buccaneers don't romanticize the aristocracy but expose how stifling and commodified it is.
The series doesn't portray societal norms as something elegant to admire, but as something to challenge.
Music with a message
Maybe the striking aspect of The Buccaneers is its embrace of modern music, and no, it's not the string quartet versions that have become a Bridgerton habit. Instead, Apple TV's drama features full-length lyrical songs, unapologetically emotional and often jarringly contemporary. When Phoebe Bridgers picks up the guitar in a moment of heartbreak, or Taylor Swift strums for a betrayal, it's not a playful wink of irony. It's emotional shorthand for a playlist generation raised on personal therapy playlists.
No accident here. Where Bridgerton uses instrumental covers as a playful nod to modernity in a fantasy setting, The Buccaneers uses pop music to erase any sense of history. The message is clear: these feelings are not ancient artifacts; they're inherently modern. In doing so, The Buccaneers makes its soundtrack a character itself, serving as both narrator and mirror.
A different kind of ensemble
Bridgerton follows an anthology format, featuring a different romantic interest from the Bridgerton family each season. This approach provides viewers with one main romance to support, with family and society centered around it. In contrast, The Buccaneers adopt a true ensemble structure. No single character dominates the show, and the romances do not define a woman's worth or screen time.
It allows a deeper exploration of female friendship, ambition, jealousy, loss, and self-doubt. Nan's illegitimacy, Conchita's displacement, and Lizzy's self-censorship all receive emotional focus. The Buccaneers isn't about who sleeps with whom but about what these women learn about themselves. To many, it feels more personal than fantasy.
A grittier, messier reality
Let's not be demure: Buccaneers is a disaster, and that's its brilliance. The ladies are not idealized but messed up, angry, exposed, and sometimes cruel, acting impulsively. Their ethics are inconsistent. Conversely, Buccaneers' world sorts itself into tidy arcs with breakups, reconciliations, and scandals driven by status. It risks emotional instability, avoiding neat resolutions. It offers a rawer, more authentic image of womanhood, perhaps more true to modern feelings. This disrupts traditional period drama conventions, shifting from nostalgic glamor to something more direct.
Public and critical reception
Numerically, Bridgerton remains an international powerhouse with millions of viewers and top Netflix positions worldwide, making it a flagship show. The Buccaneers has taken a niche but significant path, causing controversy over its new approach to female agency and period genre conventions, though it hasn't reached Bridgerton's level. Critics like Slate praise it for avoiding imitation, allowing characters to act without moralizing—letting women be selfish, emotional, and indecisive.
While Bridgerton offers high-stakes glamour, The Buccaneers leans closer to coming-of-age awkwardness, something both appealing to and achievable for a younger, self-focused crowd.
Thematic priorities shape them
Both shows are period dramas, there's no doubt about that, but their universal themes head in very different directions. Bridgerton creates a fantasy of possibility, where social rank can be bypassed by love and scandal can turn into power. The Buccaneers dispels that illusion. It explores the cost of wealth, the pressure of expectations, and the ongoing dance between personal freedom and community duty.
Where Bridgerton treats marriage as the ultimate prize, The Buccaneers considers it one potential reward. The series's exploration of identity themes, encompassing national, social, and emotional aspects, offers a bonus beyond romance. These women are not just fighting for love; they're fighting for recognition, even as they wear the same gowns and smile in the same rooms.
No competition, but contrast
It's simple to set The Buccaneers against Bridgerton in a battle of popularity, but that exaggerates what they're doing. The shows are not competitors; they're two versions of different narrative hungers. One leans into fantasy, the other into emotional truth. Both are wonderful in and of themselves because they're addressing different elements of the contemporary viewer.
The Buccaneers don't need to "trump" Bridgerton, and aren't trying to. Instead, it pushes against the limitations of what period dramas can accomplish. Having been picked up for a second season and becoming more and more dedicated viewers, the Apple TV show seems to be vying for viewers who want more from their historical drama than love.
You might be drawn to the glamorous fantasy of Bridgerton or the reflective emotionalism of The Buccaneers, but both series show that the period drama is not as outdated as it seems. They appeal to different audiences, and that diversity is part of what makes the genre strong today. Neither one is better than the other; they are simply made for different types of viewers.
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As The Buccaneers finds its voice, it's clear the show has potential, not because it's aping success, but because it's boldly reimagining it. And in a time when viewers crave both reality and spectacle, that could be the next big shift for period dramas.
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