Murray From ‘Flight Of The Conchords’ Finally Has His Own Show And It’s A Pirate Comedy

Not a day goes by when I don’t think about Murray, the ineffectual but iconic band manager from Flight Of The Conchords.

I think, where is the man who rendered this character now? Is he happy? All I really want is for this man to be happy.

Well, as it happens, he does seem quite happy. New Zealand actor Rhys Darby is now starring as the leading man in HBO’s new comedy series Our Flag Means Death, where the plays Stede Bonnet: an 18th-century aristocrat who goes through a mid-life crisis and decides to abandon his blessed life to become a pirate and befriend Blackbeard (Taika Waititi). We’ve all been there.

Bizarrely, the series is actually based on a true story: Steve Bonnet was born to a wealthy English family in Barbados and inherited his father’s sugar plantation as an adult. He later abandoned his wife and two children and despite having zero nautical experience, bought a ship before declaring himself its captain. Men, am I right?

David Jenkins, the show’s creator, says that the mystery surrounding Bonnet’s motivations is what drew him to the story. “I saw a really great story with a lot of holes in it,” Jenkins said, per Polygon.

“This guy has a midlife crisis, and then he blows up his family and his life. And then he becomes a pirate. Which already is a couple of different genres at once — it’s like true crime, mixed with whatever genre ‘midlife crisis’ is. And then he’s bad at it, and then he gets stabbed, and then he meets the world’s greatest pirate, who befriends him. And we don’t know why any of these things happened. Figuring out how to patch those holes in the story — just making it up — was really the reason to do it, in my book.”

Our Flag Means Death also stars Taika Waititi, Joel Fry, Vico Ortiz, Leslie Jones and Fred Armisen.

Watch the (very funny) trailer below.

The first three episodes of Our Flag Means Death are now streaming on Binge.