Matt Biffa knows that for any romantic teen drama, music is one of the most important love languages. So when the music supervisor got his hands on the scripts for Apple TV+’s period piece “The Buccaneers,” he immediately holed himself up and started curating a plan. He emerged from isolation with what he called an “alarmingly complicated manifesto” for what he envisioned for the series.
“My manifesto was no cover versions, no licensing existing songs and only creating brand new songs written and performed by female American artists based on the history of American popular music, or at least going back as far as Sister Rosetta Thorpe,” he tells Variety , referencing the gospel rock pioneer from the 1930s. Based on Edith Wharton’s unfinished novel, “The Buccaneers” follows five American teenagers in the 1880s who find themselves defiant members of the marriage market in London debutante society. By nature, Biffa knew the series would endure one inevitable comparison.
“The default position with any sort of youth-orientated period show is that it will fight comparisons to ‘Bridgerton,’ which is very strong on classical cover songs of popular tunes and they do that brilliantly, so that obviously was completely off our creative agenda.” While that particular mandate held firm, making a series with as much commercial potential as a feminist take on the Victorian era inevitably altered Biffa’s strategy. Most of his manifesto remained intact.
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