Review: Pirates are no stranger to pop culture. Taika Waititi's new show adds 'polite menace'

In the fine, funny, oddly sweet and surprisingly fact-based period comedy "Our Flag Means Death," beginning Thursday on HBO Max, Rhys Darby plays Stede Bonnet, a wealthy landowner who, in 1717, bored with his life, leaves his wife and children to become a pirate captain. It's a job for which he has no qualifications, and his image of which has been formed entirely from books. In his first raid, he manages to steal an apparently dead plant from some fishermen, wishing them good luck with their fishing as they depart. He has no taste for bloodshed, or other traditional requirements of piracy; it's