Ethan Hawke deliv­ers a fiery ser­mon in The Good Lord Bird

“All of this is true. Most of it hap­pened,” reads the open­ing title card in Showtime’s sev­en-part minis­eries The Good Lord Bird. This dis­claimer points to the humour that is woven amid the hor­rors of the bloody bat­tle between pro and anti-slav­ery forces in the years lead­ing up to the Amer­i­can Civ­il War. All his­tor­i­cal retellings step out­side the bounds of accu­ra­cy for dra­mat­ic effect, and as with the recent Elle Fan­ning series The Great, this ini­tial piece of infor­ma­tion sets the off-kil­ter tone.

Based on James McBride’s 2013 nov­el of the same name, it tells the sto­ry of a fic­tion­al enslaved boy Hen­ry Shack­le­ford (Joshua Caleb John­son) who is giv­en the moniker ​‘Onion’ by the con­tro­ver­sial abo­li­tion­ist John Brown (Ethan Hawke). Onion has to jug­gle a case of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty after Brown believes he is a girl, all while sur­viv­ing this dan­ger­ous land­scape in a dress and bonnet.

Por­tray­ing real events fea­tur­ing Brown’s loy­al band of abo­li­tion­ist sol­diers dur­ing a peri­od referred to as Bleed­ing Kansas, the line between jus­tice and vengeance is blurred. Choos­ing to fight with right­eous fury, he uses scrip­ture to back up his meth­ods of free­ing all slaves in the South and to point out the hypocrisy of so-called Chris­t­ian slavers.

John Brown might not be a house­hold name in 2020, but in the mid-1800s he was already leg­end. His rep­u­ta­tion def­i­nite­ly pre­ced­ed him and Hawke deliv­ers a larg­er-than-life per­for­mance of a fig­ure who burned bright and loud. The unkempt bushy beard, skin creas­es that paint a pic­ture of life hard-lived and wild eyes is unlike any role Hawke has pre­vi­ous­ly played, includ­ing a very dif­fer­ent man of faith in First Reformed.

A pas­sion project for the vet­er­an actor, Hawke also serves as co-cre­ator (along­side Mark Richard) hav­ing first met with McBride four years ago to dis­cuss an adap­ta­tion of his book. This lev­el of com­mit­ment is evi­dent from every sen­tence he utters, often yelled and with spit fly­ing in all direc­tions. It is an incred­i­bly cap­ti­vat­ing and mag­net­ic turn that doesn’t shy away from Brown’s incen­di­ary per­son­al­i­ty and inner-rage at the injus­tices plagu­ing the US. This is far from a fairy tale depic­tion of this pre-Civ­il War period.

Hawke’s unflinch­ing pres­ence is hard to look away from but it is in the qui­eter moments with Onion that both he and John­son shine. Sup­port­ing stars include Tony-win­ner Dav­eed Dig­gs as abo­li­tion­ist Fred­er­ick Dou­glass, Maya Hawke (mark­ing the first time the father and daugh­ter have worked togeth­er) and Boy­hood star Ellar Coltrane once again plays Hawke’s son.

With a cen­tral per­for­mance this bold, it would be easy for the rest of the ensem­ble to be over­shad­owed. Thank­ful­ly, bal­ance comes from John­son as the nar­ra­tor and entry point into this vio­lent and unjust world. A run­ning joke about Brown’s ram­bling ser­mons before meals and the scrip­ture quizzes that often occur dur­ing inap­pro­pri­ate moments pep­per the action with much-need­ed lev­i­ty. This role could eas­i­ly slip into the white sav­iour trope, but Brown’s bom­bas­tic demeanour and fre­quent­ly high­light­ed fal­li­bil­i­ty and flaws ensure this is avoided.

Onion’s lack of options and the vary­ing motives of men who fight along­side Brown are a reminder that even though their leader’s com­mit­ment nev­er waivers it doesn’t mean that the intrin­sic racist struc­tures will come crash­ing down. ​“Amer­i­ca will nev­er have peace until we’ve dealt with slav­ery,” Brown states in the first episode – a know­ing line that points to the nation’s deep­est wound which has yet to heal.

The Good Lord Bird pre­mieres Octo­ber 4 on Show­time and Sky Atlantic lat­er this year.