It’s hard to remember now in hindsight, but Game of Thrones was not an overnight success. It took a few seasons for the show to gain traction beyond an internet-savvy crowd. But when the fantasy show finally did reach critical mass as the best—or at the very least, buzziest—thing on TV, its impact was swift and thunderous.
From the mid to late 2010s, premium cable was carpet-bombed by middlebrow genre television shows with novelty medieval settings, political intrigue, and heaps of bodice-ripping and swordplay. Spartacus, Vikings, Into the Badlands, The Last Kingdom, The Witcher—you can imagine all of them were pitched to overeager executives as “like Game of Thrones” in some form. Among them, floating on the sea of now-forgotten relics and treasures, was Starz’s Black Sails, which ran for four seasons starting in 2014.
An action drama about 16th-century pirates, Black Sails coasts on all that defined its time and place on TV. Blood, babes, brutality—things Captain Hook’s crew sang about but never actually savored, making Black Sails‘ implicit appeal the chance to actually, for once, see a pirate’s life. (And for once, it’s a gritty depiction of new-world piracy, free from the curses and zombies that infect Disney’s blockbusters.) Though Black Sails doesn’t have any real ambition beyond that and is ultimately damned to Davy Jones’ locker by its bawdy trappings, it still makes for a good weekend binge, aye.
Screenshot via Starz
The Pirate's Life
Set in 1715, Black Sails drops anchor at the tail end of the Golden Age of Piracy. The action picks up in New Providence Island, a lush tropical paradise populated by the worst scum and villainy the new world has to offer. From the start the show revolves around three main characters: tough Captain Flint, played by a rugged Toby Stephens; cunning “Long” John Silver, played by Luke Arnold; and formidable Eleanor Guthrie (Hannah New), ostensibly the head of New Providence, whose comely surface belays a hardened soul.
The plot, as most pirate stories do, revolves around treasure. But the booty isn’t buried on some island marked with an X. In the opening salvo of episodes, Captain Flint struggles between losing the popular vote by an increasingly mutinous crew and the search for the biggest payday any pirate has ever seen. A Spanish galleon carrying five million dollars—equal to $358 million today—is vulnerable and inching close, and Flint has eyes set on it. But some crucial information about its schedule is missing, and it’s in the hands of none other than sneaky stowaway “Long” John Silver, who radiates main character energy. Thus begins a bout of wits and trust between two men fated to be in each other’s lives.
Black Sails isn’t officially based on any pre-existing IP (in the way Game of Thrones adapts George R.R. Martin’s still-unfinished tomes), though it sprang to life as a prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island; hence why a few of its characters sound familiar. Yet Black Sails is effective, stirring TV all on its own, a show that openly relishes in the popular image of pirates more than their actual role in history. Pirates did plenty to shape maritime law, practiced democracies, and impeded European presence in the colonies. You get some of that in Black Sails. But the perfect hair and makeup of Hannah New’s Eleanor or the CrossFit abs of the show’s drunk pirate extras ultimately tell you exactly what sort of show Black Sails aims to be.
Screenshot via Starz
Comfort Food TV
Black Sails’s four-season run gives it a manageable total episode count of 38. Depending on the hole you’re trying to fill, Black Sails might satisfy as an escapist adventure without daunting commitment or demanding brain power. It’s an adult-oriented show that relishes in a bawdy adolescent zeal, in which bare breasts and bloodied guts are substitutes for substance. Its blockbuster scope runs at odds with its premium cable confines, making it easy to occasionally see the tears in its seams. (Suddenly, in those aforementioned elevator pitches the “like” in “like Game of Thrones” sounds more deafening.)
Is Black Sails criminally overlooked TV magic? Not quite—its cult popularity is about what the show actually deserves. But for a reasonably expensive cable production that sailed under the shadow of bigger hits and navigated the treacherous waters of an unstable television economy, Black Sails is good sailing when you can get it. It doesn’t dive to sublime depths, but pirates were never known for their generosity. If memories of Peter Pan and Pirates of the Caribbean still swirl in your head and you need something to go along with a bottle of rum, Black Sails awaits.
