Podcast / The Ballad of Anne and Mary

"What kind of woman becomes a pirate?"

"Come, travelers and friends, gather round
A ballad have I to chill and astound
Of souls run aground, of good sailors drowned... At the
hands of Anne and Mary."

— The Ballad of Anne and Mary part 1

The Ballad of Anne and Mary is a 5 part historical fiction musical podcast directed by Lindsay Sharman and Laurence Owen, written by Sharman with music by Owen. It is set in 1721 during The Golden Age of Piracy and follows Nathaniel Mist, a reporter in London who has been commissioned by privateer Jonathan Barnet to interview Anne Bonny and Mary Read, two female pirates Barnet captured, in order to write a sensational history of pirates. However the real Anne and Mary turn out to be very different than Mist expected...

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This work provides examples of:

• Affably Evil: Basically all of the pirates seen in the series are friendly people who avoid unnecessary cruelty despite being criminals.
• All Men Are Perverts:
  • In the first scene of the series, the opening song gets sidetracked by several verses about the titular women's beauty, much to their chagrin. Later Bess sells a paper about Anne and Mary to a man by telling him that it, "Includes a woodcut of the ladies in their britches."
  • When Bess pays a beggar woman to cause a distraction so she can free a locked up Mist the woman gets a ton of donations for showing the crowd her breasts, much to Bess' chagrin.
• Alternate History: Downplayed. The series plays a bit fast and loose with the real history of the pirates, hitting the broad strokes but slightly altering the specifics such as how Anne joined Rackham's crew. The end of the series features the biggest difference with Anne and Mary escaping to Singapore, with the real life story of what happened to them being a fabrication made to cover up their escape.
• Arc Words: The superstition that 'having women onboard a ship is bad luck' is frequently brought up in relation to Anne and Mary, with characters also pointing out that having two women on board is twice as unlucky.
• Asshole Victim: Captain Graham of the Margaret is the only member of the crew killed by Rackham's crew, but he was killed because he was a Bad Boss who mistreated the people on his ship.
• Authority Sounds Deep: Captain Rackham has a deep voice befitting his authority, it's especially noticeable when he sings.
• Big Bad: Initially the series doesn't have a main villain since it's just about Anne and Mary telling their stories. As the series progresses Barnet becomes the main antagonist since he plans to torture the location of Rackham's Treasure out of the women and have Mist arrested for Sedition.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: All of the sympathetic characters in the series are pirates and criminals who push back against a corrupt government populated by smug, unpleasant characters.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Barbara, a prisoner at Newgate who claims to be Anne Bonny, is later used as a stand in for the escaped Anne by the prison guards.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Barnet tries to torture Anne and Mary for the location of Rackham's Treasure.
• Commonality Connection: Mist connects with Mary by explaining that he's been locked up in Newgate three times beforehand and fell ill there just like she did.
• Dark Action Girl: Anne and especially Mary are shown to be skilled sword fighters.
• Dirty Coward:
  • Captain Graham tries to weasel out of responsability for his mistreatment of his crew by hiding in the crowd and making different voices to make it seem like the crew likes him.
  • When Mist dreams about the capture of the Revenge, Barnet is described as having stayed on his ship out of range of the pirates' guns while his men did all the fighting. This may not be true for the real Barnet though since the dream was shown to not be entirely accurate to the real events.
• Dude Magnet: Anne claims that people declare their love for her pretty often on the Revenge.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Rackham and his crew are shown to abhor rape and have a set of rules keeping crewmates from attacking one another or stealing.
  • Scratby, the slimy turnkey watching Anne and Mary who tries to get Mist in trouble with Barnet, is bothered by his plan to torture the two for the location of Rackham's Treasure, though he goes along with it when Barnet offers him a cut of the treasure.
• Everyone Has Standards: The regular populace are all heavily invested in the sensational story of the pirates which paints them as crazy monsters, however when a child was hung for piracy as part of the Revenge's crew they pulled on his legs so he wouldn't suffer as long.
• Fake Pregnancy: Turns out Anne and Mary are faking their pregnancy in order to avoid being executed.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: There's no evidence to suggest that the real Jonathan Barnet was ever a pirate, let alone that he was a member of Rackham's crew.
• Kick the Dog: Captain Graham, in addition to being a horrid captain who got over a dozen people killed on his ship, also kicked a cat into the ocean. This is the final straw for Rackham, especially since the cat was a Calico, and Rackham, being Calico Jack, took offense to this.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Barnet gets his comeuppance when he tries to get a crowd to kill Ann, Mary, and Mist only for the three to pretend to be innocent people being harassed, humiliating him publicly before knocking him out. This, combined with their escape leaves him unable to retrieve Rackham's Treasure, incapable of getting revenge on the women, and left in relative obscurity all of which would be hell for the greedy, spiteful, egotistical Barnet.
• Last-Name Basis: Mary is frequently referred to as Read to avoid confusion between her real name Mary and her male alias Mark.
• No Accounting for Taste: Anne and John married despite John's aggressive sexism and demeaning behavior, downplayed as they do break up, though it's over him being The Stool Pigeon and not his behavior.
• Odd Friendship: Mist, an uptight humorless journalist dedicated to the truth, is surprisingly chummy with the snarky, crude Bess who creates sensationalized stories that stretch the truth.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Barnet blames Rackham's decision to only attack small ships on "female influence" and accuses him of sleeping with them and giving them a bigger share of treasure than the rest of the crew.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Rackham only attacks small ships since they're easier targets despite having less loot to steal.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Jack Rackham, captain of the Revenge is a principled man who treats his crew fairly and instates rules punishing them for partaking in pointless violence.
• Scarpia Ultimatum: When Anne and Mary were arrested Barnet offered to impregnate them so they wouldn't be executed but they refused.
• Smug Snake: Barnet is way too egotistical for his own good. When he tries to start a mutiny against Rackham, he gets carried away with airing his grievances even after Read threatened him, which results in him getting disfigured and run off the ship. Later when he intercepts Read, Bonny, and Mist during their escape, he falls for Mary's trick of letting a crowd decide their fate and when the crowd turns on him, he's so distracted trying to convince them that he's easily knocked out by Mist and Read.
• The Stool Pigeon: John Bonny, Anne's husband, pretended to be a pirate so he could sell out real pirates to the governor of New Providence.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Both women did this.
  • Anne was raised as a boy so she could eventually become a clerk under her lawyer father.
  • Mary pretended to be a man in order to join the military and kept up the ruse until sometime after joining Rackham's crew.
• Take That!: When Mist first meets Anne for her interview, she asks what she'll get out of the arrangement, and Mist promises that she'll be paid in "exposure" which she immediately mocks especially since he's using her name to boost his book's popularity.
• Upper-Class Twit: The Baroness and her entourage who come to gawk at Anne and Mary in prison are all posh idiots who are convinced the women have tails.
• Villain Song: Barnet has the song "Seize the Moment" where he tries to rally Rackham's crew into a mutiny.
• Would Hurt a Child: Barnet executed a child as part of the Revenge's crew.