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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
19
Mixed:
6
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
Oct 30, 2023
Season 1 Review:
It’s true, this isn’t your mother’s Buccaneers. And as adaptations go, it doesn’t bear much resemblance to the 1996 miniseries of the same name or, for that matter, the specifics of Wharton’s novel. But, much like the girls at its center, it’s awfully hard not to find yourself swept up in their loud, unapologetic good time.
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Nov 9, 2023
Season 1 Review:
We’re left with a group coming-of-age adventure, something that feels as if it could easily be set, instead, on an undergrad semester abroad, in 2023. And yet—the romance is compelling, and the wisteria is wisteria. I watched all eight episodes of the series in a white heat, and I am ready for more.
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The GuardianNov 8, 2023
Season 1 Review:
It is also largely a romcom rather than a fully Whartonly astute piece of social and proto-feminist commentary. But we are allowed some nonsense now and again, and there is nothing more joyfully restorative than when it is done as well as it is here. It is enormous fun without being unresonant with today’s concerns.
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RogerEbert.comNov 8, 2023
Nov 8, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Ms. Frøseth, who carries most of the dramatic weight of "The Buccaneers," and whose character is most divorced from the marriage-minded obsessions of her fellow New Yorkers, is first-rate, as are Josie Totah and Aubri Ibrag as Mabel and Lizzy Elmsworth, the members of the female quintet that comes to conquer Great Britain.
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Nov 6, 2023
Season 1 Review:
While The Buccaneers also explores matters of race, it mainly focuses on these young American women overcoming sexual assault, violence, and humiliation from a horde of royal elites. Ultimately, it’s a feminist manifesto for girls eager to find love and adventure, free of the restraints of traditional society. But particularly, it’s that scene in the opening episode where five gals clink their glasses ahead of Conchita’s wedding that resonates the most: We always come first.
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The TelegraphOct 30, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Purists might recoil at the soundtrack, the slang and the sexiness, but all in all this is a fabulous way to reintroduce Wharton to the world. Especially when compared to Julian Fellowes’s lavish but dreadfully dull The Gilded Age, here is a period drama that has managed to hit the sweet spot between modern whimsy and actual intellect.
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ColliderJun 12, 2025
Season 2 Review:
While Season 2 culminates with an ending that could indicate a bold future direction for the story, the series continues to struggle at finding a natural balance between a frothy, feminist romp and a melancholy period drama — when, like Nan, it could thrive once it ultimately makes up its mind about what it wants to be from this point forward.
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Jun 12, 2025
Season 2 Review:
The series remains as fearless as ever in its approach to the stories it’s telling, and there’s plenty to enjoy about its go-for-broke attitude. It’s just difficult not to wonder what a version of this season might look like had it given (any of) its major plotlines time to breathe.
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Nov 14, 2023
Nov 7, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Taken on its own terms and not as an adaptation, "The Buccaneers" is a well-turned object, pretty to look at and evidently expensive. ..... As a drama it comprises a busy, somewhat tiring eight hours as it veers hither and yon — there is a lot of veering — and characters fall out of and back into accord with remarkable speed and regularity, to keep things interesting.
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Jun 13, 2025
Season 2 Review:
There are low points in this season, including one affair that lacks chemistry despite some melodramatic proclamations of love, a cartoonish villain, and Leighton Meester’s limited screen time. Those hiccups aside, The Buccaneers remains a fun and unpredictable watch—even when you’re tearing your hair out over these young, often flighty characters’ choices.
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ColliderOct 30, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Romance isn't the main objective, even if the series might flirt with it on occasion by incorporating a range of scenes from hands subtly, illicitly touching to characters falling into each other's arms with passionate abandon. Instead, the finishing touches here are more realistic, and often more cynical, but whether they'll leave a sour taste in the mouth depends entirely on what viewers are hoping to see from the story itself.
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Nov 8, 2023
Season 1 Review:
All told, The Buccaneers is neither a resounding success nor an utter failure. It’s a perfectly adequate teen drama with corsets and carriages, which might well be enough to satisfy its target audience and should keep anyone else with a passing interest in the subject matter and nothing better to watch reasonably entertained.
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Nov 8, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Consumed entirely on its terms, “The Buccaneers” works reasonably well as a soapy distraction for those willing to check their brains at the ballroom door. That’s still a tepid endorsement for a series that, amid all its talk of proposals and engagements, so transparently yearns to catch “Bridgerton’s” bouquet.
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Dec 4, 2023
Season 1 Review:
Wharton’s emotional architecture—the unspoken, subtextual longing and frustration and ambition—is made dully explicit, in writing so leaden and staged that it feels ripped right out of Selling Sunset. .... Only if you think in terms of an algorithmic TV pitchbot does the show make sense.
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