Our Flag Means Death Stars Waititi and Darby

“The new comedy series Our Flag Means Death was created by American writer David Jenkins and produced by the prolific Taika Waititi, who also stars as Blackbeard, to whom he brings a leonine grace,” Los Angeles Times TV critic Robert Lloyd writes.

“Like Jenkins’ wonderful, terminated-too-soon People of Earth, which located a streak of banality among alien invaders, and Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows, which brought vampires down to Earth, Our Flag Means Death takes an exotic subject and humanises it, makes it more familiar through modern speech and attitudes,” Lloyd writes.

“It’s not a new sort of comedy … but it’s a pretty reliable one. In any case, I am a sucker for it, as I am for Rhys Darby, best known here for his terrible manager, Murray, in Flight of the Conchords. With his native lilt and plucky air, which he can shade easily to pique, he strikes a figure of optimism unbowed by incompetence.”

Our Flag Means Death screens on HBO Max in the United States.

Original article by Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2022.