Friday, 18 April 2014

Black Sails Review



Black Sails is a Pirates of the Caribbean style romp following the adventures, or rather misadventure of Captain Flint and his crew as they hunt for the motherload of all Spanish gold cargoes. 

The series opens with a high-seas battle, where a crew is picked off one-by-one by an enemy they cannot see. However, once that is done with and we are introduced properly to the attacking crew - led by Captain Flint - the sailors turn out to be quite a boring bunch. 

Visually Black Sails is beautiful, with great sets and good camera work but the story gets bogged down very quickly with constant double-crossing between the characters. In the first episode this is quite confusing as you are introduced to a lot of characters. Then it just keeps going for the rest of the series. 

It also takes six episodes before Captain Flint sets sail in search of the ship carrying the Spanish gold haul - despite talking about it for so long. Once at sea though, the pace does pick up and there is a lot of action but I don’t understand why it took six episodes to get to that. 

Bland characters and constant faffing aside though, Black Sails does have some interesting side plots and funny moments. It also cuts quite close to the knuckle at times and can be quite grisly but these moments are few and far between like the action. It’s still a decent series though and I would recommend a watch if you have Amazon Prime. 

It gets 6/10. 

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