Previewing The Good Lord Bird

The first things that greets viewers at the start of each episode of The Good Lord Bird is a title card informing you that, “All of this is true, most of it happened.”  This reminded me of The Great that claimed its show was “Based on historical fact (sort of)”.   Both shows features main characters wearing dresses that play opposite of crazy people except the protagonist of The Good Lord Bird is a work of fiction.  Oh, and a dude.

 

Henry, who is forced to wear a dress for most of the series because when he is rescued as a slave, his rescuer thought someone called him Henrietta?  So when that person that rescuers you from slavery gives you a dress to wear, I guess it would be rude to refuse it.  And when they start calling you onion because you ate one, I guess you just go as “Onion” now.  Now his savior was not just any person but John Brown who you may or may not remember from the paragraph in your high school history book when they call him the most famous abolitionist who went around the South freeing slaves and murdering slave owners.

 

After being rescued, Onion goes on a Forrest Gumpian travel across pre-Civil War America, not only does he spend much of his time in John Brown’s gang but also has run ins with Fredrick Douglass (Hamilton’s Daveed Diggs) and Harriet Tubman.  Even though Ethan Hawke (Tesla) plays John Brown (and at times comes across like Will Forte playing Zeb Miller) this is Onion’s story and considering how Hawke’s performance is turned up to eleven most of the time he is on screen, it may be for the best.

 

Also appearing in The Good Lord Bird are Wyatt Russell (Everybody Wants Some!!) as a real life Confederate Soldier who plays a big part in the John Brown lore.  Ellar Coltrane, who spend twelve years playing Hawke’s son while filming Boyhood, also play’s John Brown’s son here.  Later in the series, one of John Brown’s daughters shows up and is also played by someone who Hawke is very familiar with.

 

Book adaptations have flourished in the time of Peak television, getting to fill out the stories over the course of four to ten episodes which movies have to cram into two(ish) hours.  The Good Lord Bird may be one of the few book adaptations that would have been better off as a movie.  The joke of Onion in a dress gets old quick.  It seems more people notice John Brown in a time before photographs than people realize Onion is not a girl.  Ethan Hawke firing on all cylinders in every scene also gets a little grating to the point you may be glad when he disappears for almost full episodes.  Still, the John Brown story is one that deserves more than a paragraph and The Good Lord Bird does a decent job expanding on his legacy to this nation.

 

The Good Lord Bird airs Sundays at 9:00 on Showtime.