Retro Television Review: Black Sails (Season 1, 2014)

In the modern world, those who have the hardest time are the conservatives wanting to promote traditional family values in popular culture. One example that shows how challenging their task might be is provided by Treasure Island, the adventure novel by Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, which enjoys the status of one of the most famous works of young adult literature. However, its most recent—and, given the attention span of the youngest generations, probably the most well-known—incarnation comes in the form of the Black Sails TV series, which, by being produced by the Starz network, suggests that Stevenson's template has received a treatment that, at the very least, could be called an "adult series."

Its creators, Jonathan E. Steinberg and Robert Levine, did not adapt Stevenson's novel directly, but the series serves as a sort of prequel, set roughly a few decades before its events. This is an "interesting" and quite dramatic period, at least when it comes to the Caribbean. In 1715, those sugar cane and other agricultural crops unknown in Europe could make anyone with a bit of land, slaves, and an entrepreneurial spirit an immensely wealthy man, but the insatiable treasuries of European courts also drove the great powers to war over control of those islands and colonies. This created chaos, exploited by even more enterprising individuals in the form of pirates, who would then have their golden age. One of them is Captain Flint (played by Toby Stephens), an experienced sailor who seems more far-sighted than his colleagues and knows that times are changing. England, recently fused with Scotland into the United Kingdom, will begin to create the British Empire and bring law and order to the world's seas. Flint, like many other criminals, dreams of ending his career with one big lucrative job that will make not only him but also his crew rich enough to spend the rest of their lives as peaceful and respectable citizens. The opportunity for this comes with the Urca de Lima, a Spanish galleon that transports a fabulous wealth from the New World to its home country. Its successful interception, however, depends on the information stolen by the enterprising sailor John Silver (played by Luke Arnold). Meanwhile, Flint must also deal with the logistical preparations for his venture, in which the Bahamian island of New Providence plays a key role. Pirates have seized it a few years ago and created something akin to an independent state. There, the main authority is Eleanor Guthrie (played by Hannah New), the owner of a local shop who, thanks to her father and other family connections, serves as the main intermediary for pirates in fencing plundered goods.

The pirate genre, given that it contains action, adventure, exotic costumes, and locations, should, at first glance, be quite attractive to film and television producers. On the other hand, the costs of reconstructing ancient sailing ships, as well as the logistical and technical difficulties that come with filming at sea, or commercial risks such as those that destroyed the Hollywood studio Carolco in the case of Cutthroat Island, are the reason why there are relatively few pirate stories on big and small screens today. Only megastudios like Disney, which have enough money to burn on Pirates of the Caribbean, or Starz, for which early 18th Century piracy serves only as a framework for a much simpler formula of offering explicit sex and violence to cable television viewers, can indulge in this genre. Although it cannot be said that Black Sails, filmed on locations in South Africa, looks bad, the first season clearly suggests that naval battles will be a secondary part of the content. Almost all the action takes place not at sea, but in New Providence, with a fictional microcosm of vivid characters and subplots, which many critics have compared to David Milch's Deadwood. Comparisons between the two series are unavoidable because Black Sails, like the previous series, contains both fictional characters—those from Stevenson's original and those created by the series authors—and real historical figures, among whom stands out the imposing pirate captain Charles Vane (played by Zach McGowan), his smooth-talking assistant Jack Rackham (played by Toby Schmitz), and Anne Bonney (played by Clara Paget), one of the few female pirates who entered history books.

Given that this is a Starz series, the depiction of life in New Providence cannot go without “spicy” content. So, one of the most memorable characters is the prostitute Max (Jessica Parker Kennedy) whom we occasionally get to see in the birthday suit, and a relatively large part of the plot takes place in a brothel. There is also the standard explicit lesbian scene among the main characters. Similar to Starz's Spartacus, Black Sails attempts to prevent potential feminist backlash over exploitative portrayal of women by also having male actors display certain parts of their anatomy for those viewers who are interested.

Much more valuable in Black Sails, at least for that part of the audience that likes a bit "deeper" content, is the way in which screenwriters succeeded in filling eight episodes of a pirate series in which, in fact, there are few pirate battles. This was found in the exceptional care for historical and other details related to some practical problems related to pirate activity and lifestyle. In this world, pirates can expect to get rich relatively quickly and easily, but only if they agree to exceptionally high risks of execution or mutilation, while at the same time having an incredibly hard time on ships where captains have almost absolute power over them. On the other hand, Black Sails also provides an interesting insight into how pirates created their own socio-political system that some contemporary observers might call socialism and democracy, while the economic aspect of their activity, or the need for self-organisation, can be interesting to libertarians.

None of this, however, would work if the producers of Black Sails had not gathered a quite diverse but talented and energetic acting ensemble. Toby Stephens, one of the princes of British theatre, is imposing in the role of the nominal protagonist torn between noble ideals and morally dubious actions. Luke Arnold is quite interesting in the role of the smooth-talking antihero, while the imposing Zachary McGowan manages to overshadow even the nominal protagonists. Jessica Parker Kennedy, on the other hand, is in a quite ungrateful position where the audience remembers her more for her "exotic" appearance and nudity, while Toby Schmitz (who also appears naked in one scene) is provided with much more vivid lines by the screenwriters. The biggest discovery of the series is Hannah New, who could be considered a sort of heir to Keira Knightley, and older fans of the genre would proclaim her the most beautiful and charismatic pirate princess since Carol Andre played the role of Lady Marianne in Sandokan. The most impressive performance is given by the character actor Mark Ryan in the role of Flint's assistant Gates, probably the only character in the entire series for whom it can be said that he possesses something akin to a conscience.

The first season, which was quite economically reduced to eight episodes, ends in a way that is quite irritating to today's fans of television - with a sort of deus ex machina cliffhanger. This, in fact, will not present any particular surprise to the audience familiar with Stevenson's template. The subplot related to the puritanical Flint's lover (whose role is played by the South African actress Louise Barnes) also seems like a “soapish” element in a much more compact and serious story. Despite all these shortcomings, Black Sails deservedly kept the audience's attention and secured its future for three more seasons.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

(Note: The text in the original Croatian version is available here.)

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