To the left, the N.C. Wyeth 1911 illustration of Long John Silver from Treasure Island. To the right, Luke Arnold portraying a young John Silver in season 2 of Black Sails in 2015.

Caution to those who have not seen all of Black Sails up to March 26, 2016 and wish not to spoil their first viewings – there are discussions that occasionally spoil small plot points from the show.  Also, this editorial and review covers the show’s first three seasons

“…Set in and around a historically accurate time and place, in Nassau in the Bahamas…”

– Jonathan E. Steinberg, Executive Producer/Co-Creator of Black Sails

“It’s brutal, it’s gritty, and it’s real…”

– Hannah New, role of Eleanor Guthrie in Black Sails

“It’s not the cheesy pirate thing, it’s not fantasy, it’s trying to actually portray how life could have been in the Golden Age of Piracy.”

– Clara Paget, role of Anne Bonny in Black Sails

On January 18, 2014, Starz released the first episode of their new show, Black Sails, on Youtube, in partnership with the entertainment network Machinima, a week before it officially aired on Starz’s premium American cable television channel.  This early preview included a ten-minute featurette about their new show and presented the previous three quotes.  Other promotional videos for the show featured similar claims about accuracy.  Two years after the premiere, the show continues to promote itself as “realistic”.  One claim they repeated involved avoiding the most common clichés in pirate films such as parrots, eye patches, and Robert Newton’s pirate accent.  So far, Black Sails avoided these obvious pirate stereotypes.  They did not perpetuate the most blatant tropes of pirates, but Black Sails still repeats many other tropes from the past century of film and television, resulting in many historical inaccuracies.  However, some aspects of this show are new to this media genre and present the smallest of steps towards historical accuracy.  It also stands as a unique production for the pirate genre in Hollywood. Continue reading →