EPISODE
SEASON
Black Sails - Season 1
The series is a prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, and is set 20 years before the events depicted in that literary classic.
4 October 1951, Bussum, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
22 September 1970, London, England, UK
1 October 1962, Nigeria
9 May 1972, Napier, New Zealand
24 December 1969, Cape Town, South Africa
29 July 1972, Johannesburg, South Africa
15 April 1983, Springs, South Africa
8 November 1975, Johannesburg, South Africa
7 March 1949
January 27, 2014
Black Sails is actually spinning a cleverly-crafted tale of intrigue, secrets and deceit surrounding a race for an enormous cache of gold in a Spanish galleon.
January 17, 2014
Black Sails is exactly like the 18th-century Caribbean pirates it brings to life: dirty, amoral and worth stomaching only when there are no women around.
January 27, 2014
Maybe they were going for "Deadwood on the Beach," with the politics of organizing an unruly bunch the underlying theme. Instead, they got "Spartacus Island," a less-elevated narrative with violence in keeping with the Starz brand.
January 21, 2014
Black Sails may not be the most well written or riveting story on TV at the moment, but it's certainly going to fill that lustful void for violence and graphic action.
January 27, 2014
If you're more action-oriented, you'll soon find yourself shouting at the screen, "Less talking, more cannon fire."
January 22, 2014
But there's an intelligence to its treatment of the Nassau community and whether a settlement based on lawlessness and a shadow economy is sustainable -- one that takes the series in some complicated and unexpected directions.
January 29, 2014
Another notable criticism is the pacing, as after a fair battle in the opening scene the rest of the episode fell straight down the cliff. A long, boring cliff.
January 27, 2014
The era is a rich vein to mine, and to their credit, the creators are light on pirate cliches - I do not believe one "aargh!" is uttered. More swashbuckling please.
January 24, 2014
To paraphrase Woody Allen's paraphrase of an old joke, what Black Sails has to offer is mediocre, and the portions are small.
January 22, 2014
If this sounds (a) like the least merry pirate yarn ever constructed, and (b) a little bit like Game of Thrones, feel free to shiver your own timbers.
