Edith Wharton hadn’t finished her novel, The Buccaneers, when she died in 1937, but it was completed in 1993 by Marion Mainwaring. The result was not considered an unalloyed triumph, but there was certainly a lot more Edith Wharton in it than you’ll find in Apple TV+’s dramatisation.
This second season carries on from 2023’s original eight episodes, and finds the American adventuresses of the previous instalments now firmly ensconced in their adopted English surroundings, circa 1870. The action centres around the goings-on at Tintagel Castle, where Nan St George (Kristine Froseth) has just become the Duchess of Tintagel by dint of marrying Theo, the Duke (Guy Remmers).
But obviously she shouldn’t have, since we’re only minutes into the episode when Nan is wailing that “I’ve made a terrible mistake – I’ve married the wrong man!” But no matter. Christina Hendricks returns as Nan’s mother Patti St George (pictured below), with Adam James as her husband Tracy, while Imogen Waterhouse plays Nan’s sister Jinny. Guy Thwarte (with whom Jinny is in the process of eloping to a picturesque Italian seaside village) is portrayed by Matthew Broome.
The thrust of the story purports to be the culture clash between the brash, wealthy Americans and the olde-world aristocratic Brits, who need a blast of galvanising New World energy while lusting after the newcomers’ thick wads of dollars, but any vestigial trace of period authenticity is erased by the incessant backdrop of galloping pop songs, and by the way the entire milieu of the story has been energetically Bridgerton-ised. Thus, we have several mixed race characters stirred in with the starchy English toffs, while the Stateside visitors look like Taylor Swift fans who have won prizes in a dressing-up competition. Mabel Elmsworthy (Josie Totah) and Honoria Marable (Mia Threapleton) scarcely bother to disguise their lesbian romance. A quick cameo from Meghan Markle would suit the overall mood perfectly.
The shrewdness and control of Wharton’s own writing are inevitably nowhere to be seen, and the script shows little sign of acknowledging that the 19th century ever existed. The bitty, short-attention-span approach to the narrative possibly owes a little to Lord Fellowes’s cartoon-esque depictions of the British aristocracy.
Constructing anything resembling a rounded character from this material would be a stern test of any thespian’s mettle, though Amelia Bullmore puts on a stout and frosty display as the Dowager Duchess of Tintagel. She’s battling to keep control as the bizarre love-tangle between her son Theo, Mr Thwarte and the St George sisters threatens to tip the CGI-enhanced Tintagel citadel over the cliff and into the foaming waves below (pictured above, Francesca Corney as Jean Hopeleigh and Matthew Broome as Guy Thwarte). The dowager has history with Reede Robinson, played with a kind of battered melancholy by Greg Wise. He chides her for having lost her youthful feistiness and settling for conformity instead. “Idealistic is just another word for naive,” she retorts, rather disappointingly.
But Nan has not yet reached her own age of disillusionment, delivering a fiery feminist manifesto to her assembled dinner guests. “No man should be allowed to own his wife,” she proclaims. “To choose her like an ornament or to gradually erase her… I seem to have a voice and I will use it!” Husband Theo agrees with her, although further revelations concerning assorted dangerous liaisons will test his powers of forgiveness to the limits and beyond. And the little matter of producing an heir to the estate cannot be overlooked. It’s tough to be a toff.
