Black Sails
Starts as a sword and sandal pirate cash grab, becomes Game of Thrones with sails: Flint's war, Silver's ledger, a planned ending that lands. Boardwalk Empire next? This.
Cast & Key People
Our Review
Black Sails has a marketing problem it never recovered from: it looks like a Sword and Sandal cash grab, the sort of cable show that exists to show shoulders, and the first three episodes barely argue otherwise. Then around episode four it sets down the sword, picks up a ledger, and becomes one of the smartest political shows television produced this century.
This is Treasure Island as a union organizing drama. Captain Flint runs the pirate republic of New Providence like a warlord negotiating between the Empire, the French, the slave traders, and his own mutinous captains, and Long John Silver is the best written character on the show: a one-legged printer’s apprentice playing everyone’s game three moves deep. The Miranda storyline about who gets to read, the Madi arc’s quiet answer to it, these are the moments that make the show worth all 38 episodes. Hannah New’s Silver earns every single one of the comparisons people make.
It holds 8.2 on IMDb from 122K voters and 81% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the honest truth is that the audience number belongs higher, because people who finish season three are evangelists. The final season wraps every thread with the rarest thing in prestige television: a planned ending that lands. If you love Boardwalk Empire, watch this next. Starz, and it rotates onto other services.
