The Good Lord Bird (2020)

The Good Lord Bird is an unusual thing: a smart, starry treatment of serious historical events that manages to retain a sense of humour without losing heart or gravitas.

Guided by a steady adaptation from veteran screenwriter Mark Richard and a gripping performance from Hawke, this filmed version is a rollicking good time, a lovely complement to McBride’s literary achievement that should drive more readers to the book.

The Good Lord Bird does an excellent job of balancing its serious subject matter with an almost breezy folktale tone. Each episode contains both profoundly emotional moments and beats that will make you laugh out loud. Also, it never veers into exploitation, which is a common pitfall in films that deal with American slavery.

The Good Lord Bird speaks to the present as well as the past. This is one of the most thoughtful and surprising series of an already impressive year: a historical epic of real vision.

Rather than inflate or canonize John Brown, “The Good Lord Bird” embraces his humanity (even when it leans more toward explosive entertainment than strict historiography). And what entertainment it is. With a rollicking pilot from director Albert Hughes (“Menace II Society,” “From Hell”), the limited series is bursting with lively music, well-staged shootouts, and a wicked sense of humor. Holding it all together is Hawke.

Hawke mesmerizes as Brown — excellent casting for a wild-eyed character — and Johnson brings a mix of a child’s innocence and a young man’s recognition of the craziness of the world around him to his sometimes heartbreaking performance as Onion.

The most revelatory part of The Good Lord Bird is how funny it is.

It is a Western at its core, filled with incredible settings and design, but it is vibrantly alive in ways that television versions of this genre haven’t been in years. Anchored by a truly remarkable performance from Ethan Hawke, “The Good Lord Bird” is smart, entertaining television that doesn’t highlight or underline its timeliness or messages as much as it allows the viewers to do half the work.

Executive producer McBride, Hawke and Richard don't want to fall into white savior tropes, and as big as Hawke's performance is, the grandiosity is there primarily to be punctured; Brown's very real affection for Onion is captured by Hawke more in beats of quiet regard than paternalistic puffery. Seven hours of The Good Lord Bird left me both clear-eyed about John Brown as a historical figure and curious to learn more. Above all, it left me with zero doubts about Hawke’s ever-evolving talent.

Oh Lord! Oh Ethan Hawke! The preformaces are so excellent. Ethan is so magical in his madness. It's beautifull. The start of this show was amazing. It makes you invested in the story immediately. In the middle it slow down a bit, but if you got throught it rewards you with an amazing, heart- wrenching finale.