This adaptation of James McBride’s 2013 novel stars Hawke on career-best form as abolitionist crusader John Brown. It’s complicated, violent, intelligent – and tons of fun
Considering the subject matter, viewers who aren’t familiar with the 2013 James McBride novel The Good Lord Bird could be forgiven for expecting a sombre tone from this adaptation, airing on Sky Atlantic. The story follows the last years of the American abolitionist John Brown, whose raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 – an attempt to initiate a slave revolt – is widely believed to have been the prelude to the American civil war.
But this series is far from sombre. It is a waggish and raucous tale that sets out its stall from the beginning, when it opens with a note that “All of this is true”, quickly followed by another, adding, “Most of it happened”. The story is narrated by Henry Shackleford, known to Brown as Henrietta, or Little Onion, owing to one of the many misunderstandings and mishaps that urge the story onwards. Henry is a 13-year-old slave, freed by Brown and then adopted, sort of, by him, almost entirely by accident; Brown’s bluster and momentum hit such a pace that he doesn’t stop to realise that Henry is not the girl he thinks she is. But being a girl has its advantages in the bloody world Brown and his “abolitionists’ army” inhabit, and Henry has an instinctive knack for survival.