And as “The Good Lord Bird” continues on its boisterous way, Hawke manages to deepen his portrayal into so much more than humor, as he becomes an endearing and humane mentor and friend to the character who is the story’s parallel hero and the narrator, the 9-year-old Henry Shackleford (Joshua Caleb Johnson). He is shouting until he’s hoarse so those he meets on the road will listen, shouting to build an army of abolitionists, shouting because he’s enraged at the hatred he sees, and shouting, in the comic vision of this fictionalized tale, because he’s a brilliant, violent, absurd, exhausted kook.īy the second episode of seven, I missed his dirty, hairy face and his overlong dinner prayers - which his adult sons decry - whenever he wasn’t in the action the absence of his oversize performance for a few sustained sections of the series gave my heart room to grow fonder. Hawke’s Brown is an irritant of the first order, to enact God’s will for the equality and freedom of all people on Earth. You know, “Featuring a special appearance by Ethan Hawke.”Īnd then I got with the program, which premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. With all the scripture and fury in Brown’s righteous screeds, Hawke is irritating and I wanted him to shut his actorly mouth and retreat into a cast cameo. As the abolitionist whose 1859 raid of the Harpers Ferry, W.Va., armory helped trigger the Civil War, he gives an exaggerated, theatrical performance with a lot of ranting and spitting - Al Pacino in a Mamet play, only on TV so you’re right up in his face.
For the first few minutes of “The Good Lord Bird,” Showtime’s high-spirited adaptation of James McBride’s celebrated novel, I did not enjoy watching Ethan Hawke play John Brown.
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