The Good Lord Bird (Season 1)

The Good Lord Bird (2020) is a Showtime miniseries you can watch online on iFILM. Across seven episodes, fire-breathing abolitionist John Brown tries to burn slavery out of America on the eve of the Civil War. Ethan Hawke plays him as part prophet, part madman.

The story belongs to a teenager nicknamed Onion, a freed boy whom Brown mistakes for a girl and drags into his ragtag rebel army. Through Onion's eyes we get the endless sermons, the doomed faith, and the 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Along the way he crosses paths with Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, drawn here as flawed, funny, fully human.

Adapted from James McBride's National Book Award-winning novel, the show keeps the book's reckless nerve, telling the horror of slavery through bitter comedy. Hawke's performance landed him a Golden Globe nomination. The uprising fails, but the spark catches, and a nation goes to war. Stream The Good Lord Bird online on iFILM.