I started watching Black Sails back when it debuted in 2014. I had just been honorably discharged from the military and was living with my parents for a few months as I waited for college to start in the fall. I stumbled upon this show because my parents had a free trial for Starz and was immediately hooked by the premise of the golden age of piracy.

Then college started and, while I enjoyed the first season of Black Sails, it wasn’t enough to convince me to get a Starz subscription when Season 2 was released the following year.

Thankfully, the show found its way to Netflix. After a full decade, I was finally able to finish this rousing pirate tale.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, even the opening credits are a treat to watch. The animation is done well, the musical score compels you to tap your foot along to the beat, and it leaves subtle cues as to the overarching themes of the show: anarchy vs civilization, the deadly power of the ocean, greed, love, and multiple sorts of honor.

You can watch the opening credits here. Even if you have no desire to watch the show, this sequence really is cool and you should enjoy the music.

The main plotline follows the fictional Captain James Flint, the same Captain Flint from Treasure Island, as he chases an impossible prey: the Urca de Lima, a Spanish treasure galleon. The plot eventually widens and thickens as the show rolls along, but this is the general thrust of it.

Along for the ride is a colorful mix of pirates fictional and real: Charles Vane, ‘Calico’ Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny, Billy Bones, and many, many more. Nassau, a large port town on New Providence Island serves as their home base from which a wealthy yet disgraced English merchant family, the Guthries, fence their stolen goods.

As is typical for these types of shows, early on there is gratuitous nudity, sex, and gore. I’ve noticed a trend, however, that such shows use the nudity and violence to draw in the crowd who enjoys that and will eventually taper off. I might be mistaken, but the final season of Black Sails had almost no nudity at all.

So if you’re like me and would rather the show dispense with the fan-service and get back to the plot, you can rest assured that after the first few episodes the show gets much better in this regard.

I also want to note that the casting was sublime. Every character felt fully fleshed out thanks, in part, to a solid script but mostly to the wonderful performances of the actors. Australian actor Luke Arnold deserves special praise as ‘Long John’ Silver, and the late Ray Stevenson brought the menacing, legendary Black Beard to life.

Overall, Black Sails was probably the best show I’ve watched since AMC’s Hell on Wheels. It’s stuffed to the gills with historical pirates and pirate-hunters, and it tells of a swashbuckling adventure with memorable characters, devious villains, epic naval battles, and an elusive horde of Spanish gold.

If you have a Netflix account and even a passing interest in pirate tales, I highly recommend it. The only negatives to the show are the aforementioned overindulgence of nudity and violence, which eventually tapers off. Other than that it gets a perfect score from me.