Black Sails TV Series

[Gutbukkit]

Episode 3 of my second viewing of the series. Maybe I should have paced myself as season two seems a long way off  

[Captain Blood]

You know the best thing, I've just realised?
I've been racking my brains to place the big, burly, bald-headed, middle-aged actor who plays Gates, the Quartermaster...
I've just got him.
He was Nasir, the taciturn, swarthy saracen in Robin of Sherwood, nigh on 30 years ago...
Brilliant.
I like it even better now...

[Chesh]

I watched the first episode last week after that weeks episode of Vikings.  May thether my phone signal to my Ipad on the train to Salute and watch some more then.

[admiraldick]

Lol. You guys seem awfully hard to please sometimes 

I've only watched a couple of eps so far and really enjoyed them. i can understand that some people felt it was a bit too talky and not enough fighty, but actually i thought that was a huge strength. it gave a much more rounded picture of what it must have been like on a pirate ship that you often see. the idea that when not having to do the backbreaking labour of actually crewing a ship, you would have to put up with huge amounts of political maneuvering and back-stabbing was quite refreshing in a way, and added a lot more depth to the characters than anything else i can remember about pirates.

the opening sequence where we meet an un-named John Silver was very clever and told me more about the character than I've seen invested into him in any other incarnation (and I'm not just talking Muppet's Treasure Island and the mid-90s Legend of Treasure Island series). seeing Billy Bones' growing mix of resentment, respect and fear of Flint has been very enjoyable so far and I look forward to seeing how he becomes the wreck we know from the book. Flint is a wily kind of character and you can see why he's ended up the captain and while he's only that bit cleverer than everyone around him, you can imagine how legends of him as a demon captain may have grown around him.

the special effects and sets were clean, sharp and convincing in a way that Game of Thrones and Spartacus has never really managed to handle. the costume choices are not always historically accurate, but the setting 'feels' a lot more real than anything i've seen in Vikings or Copper. it's fiction, not historical drama, and yet manages to seem more authentic than dramas that are trying to tell a 'true story' like The Tudors.

all in all, i would rate it quite highly so far and if nothing else it's nice to have a tv series about pirates as i don't think we've had one of those for a while.

if i was going to criticise it, it would be for the role the women play in the show. someone has obviously decided that because women basically can't play a role in a story about piracy, those women that do appear have to be ridiculously over the top. where the male pirates are relatively gentile in their speech the women can't help but eff and blind every other word and there is basically no point at which a women appears on screen and there aren't also a pair of knockers on full display (hers or some other wench's). neither of these features develop the story and they basically make it impossible for me to watch it with anyone else or even to recommend it, in spite of how good the rest of the show is.

the only other thing that irked me was, as someone else pointed out, some of the characters dress 'weird' (though it seems to be restricted to 'bad-guys). Vane, Rackham and Bonny dress like they are from Waterworld, which is particularly galling as they are the only characters that aren't entirely made up. its not enough to put me off watching, but its annoying every time they're on screen (particularly Rackham's stupid bouffant).

[Penchour]

You know the best thing, I've just realised?
I've been racking my brains to place the big, burly, bald-headed, middle-aged actor who plays Gates, the Quartermaster...
I've just got him.
He was Nasir, the taciturn, swarthy saracen in Robin of Sherwood, nigh on 30 years ago...
Brilliant.
I like it even better now...

  THat's it !!! Thanks for the enlightment !

[Dr. Zombie]

You know the best thing, I've just realised?
I've been racking my brains to place the big, burly, bald-headed, middle-aged actor who plays Gates, the Quartermaster...
I've just got him.
He was Nasir, the taciturn, swarthy saracen in Robin of Sherwood, nigh on 30 years ago...
Brilliant.
I like it even better now...

Sweet zombie Jesus!!! That's it! It has really been bothering me that I could not place him.

Man Nasir was such a cool character, with the two swords on his back.

[Captain Blood]