If you subscribe to Netflix and are looking for a great historical fiction show to watch, you have lots of options. For instance, The Last Kingdom dramatizes the Danish invasions of England during the 9th and 10th centuries, and Bridgerton gives us romance and intrigue in a reimagined version of Britain’s Regency era. But one show has both of those series beat: Black Sails, which originally aired on Starz before coming to Netflix.

Set far from England, Black Sails takes place mainly in the pirate port of Nassau on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas. We’re in the early 18th century, the Golden Age of Piracy. Black Sails blends fact and fiction into an unforgettable TV experience.

Is Black Sails even really historical fiction?

Yes, mostly

Black Sails has an ensemble cast, but the first among equals is Captain Flint (Toby Stephens), a Lieutenant in the British Royal Navy who turned to piracy after a cruel betrayal. He now pushes back against the corrupt influence of civilization with the help of crew members like Billy Bones (Tom Hopper) and Long John Silver (Luke Arnold). You might recognize those names from the classic adventure book Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, a work of total fiction. You’re right: Black Sails is a prequel to Treasure Island, but it brings it real historical events to give the story some verisimilitude.

For instance, a key plot point early in the show involves the Spanish ship the Urca de Lima, which really did sink in 1715; it was loaded with treasure, which gives the show an explanation for how Flint got his hands on the gold that would go on to be such a big plot point in Treasure Island. The show covers the attempt by the English crown to get control over Nassau, which was a real place, by appointing Woodes Rogers (Luke Roberts) as Royal Governor of the Bahamas.

A lot of the characters are drawn directly from history, including real-life pirates like Charles Vane (Zach McGowan), Jack Rackham (Toby Schmitz), Anne Bonny (Clara Paget), Benjamin Hornigold (Patrick Lyster), Ned Low (Tadhg Murphy), and Blackbeard (Ray Stevenson). They even do some blending at the edges, as with the character of Israel Hands (David Wilmot), who was both a fictional character in Treasure Island and an actual pirate in Blackbeard’s crew.

There are other fun details, like Jack Rackham designing the traditional pirate flag known as the Jolly Roger, which really did happen. A lot of what goes down on Black Sails isn’t strictly true, but the show pays such close attention to detail that it fools us into believing it anyway, and that’s more than half the battle.

Get on board with Black Sails

One Piece meets Game of Thrones

And speaking of battles, Black Sails gives us some memorable ones, especially once the second season starts and the budget balloons a bit. It’s true that the first season of Black Sails is held back a little by the budget and the fact that a lot of the storylines haven’t built themselves up yet, but from the second season onward, the show catches the wind and never looks back. It’s one of the few shows where it’s worth pushing through a couple of boring parts at the beginning to get to the best stuff.

That said, Black Sails doesn’t need action to make itself interesting. There’s a lot of drama baked into a show about what is effectively a group of criminals trying to bring order (but not too much order) to a community made up of people who have rejected the idea of living within the law. Pirates tend to do what they want, and characters like Eleanor Guthrie (Hannah New) have a devil of a time trying to get them to come together and work against the specter of British control, to try and legitimize them just enough that they can survive, and maybe even thrive.

The pirates on Black Sails are morally grey, sometimes violent, pragmatic, and contradictory; there’s something heroic about them trying to carve out space for themselves in a world that would rather they not exist, but they’re not cut-and-dried heroes like the pirates on, say, One Piece. Black Sails is closer in spirit to a show like Game of Thrones, where it’s less about who’s good and bad and more about who can get and hold onto power. And like on Game of Thrones, the stakes on Black Sails are real. Important characters can and will die, so viewers can never get too comfortable.

Black Sails is great from start to finish

If you don’t have a good ending, you don’t have much of anything

But unlike Game of Thrones, which ended in a way that infuriated fans, the ending of Black Sails is widely celebrated, wrapping up the show’s various storylines in a way that honors both actual history and the events of Treasure Island. It’s bittersweet, sad, hopeful, and melancholy, and will leave you with the feeling that you just watched something spectacular.

Black Sails runs for four seasons and a total of 38 episodes, which means it’s a long enough series to sink your teeth into but not so long that it’ll take you an interminable amount of time to finish. It’s the perfect tightly packed drama, and it’s streaming on Netflix right now.

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Historical fiction addiction

Historical fiction is a dependable genre. Basing a story in actual fact gives it a good foundation, but there will always be holes writers can fill with drama, comedy, and intrigue. You don’t have to make up the whole apparatus, just the fun stuff.

And Netflix has a ton of great historical fiction to sample, including The Crown, Peaky Blinders, Vikings: Valhalla, and more. Black Sails fits right in with the best of them.

Release Date

2014 – 2017

Network

Starz

Showrunner

Jonathan E. Steinberg

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  Toby Stephens

  Captain James Flint

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  Hannah New

  Eleanor Guthrie

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  Jessica Parker Kennedy

  Max

The Artemis II crew is almost at the moon, and the astronauts spent this weekend carrying out preparations for their lunar flyby on Monday. That included manual piloting demonstrations, reviewing their science objectives for the six-hour observation period and evaluating their space suits, which are there for life support in the event of an emergency and for their return home. But, they’ve had plenty of time to take in the views, too — and those views sure are spectacular. In the latest series of images shared by the space agency, the astronauts are seen gazing at Earth through the windows of the Orion spacecraft.

Orion will reach the moon’s vicinity shortly after midnight on Monday, April 6. Later that day, the crew is expected to reach a point farther than any humans have traveled from Earth, surpassing the record of 248,655 miles from Earth set by the Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.

The lunar observation period will start at 2:45PM ET, and a few hours later, they’ll be behind the moon and briefly drop out of communication. The spacecraft’s closest approach to the moon is expected to occur at 7:02PM, when it will be 4,066 miles from the surface. “From that distance, the crew will see the entire disk of the Moon at once, including regions near the north and south poles,” according to NASA. The crew will later get a chance to see a solar eclipse “as Orion, the Moon, and the Sun align in such a way that the astronauts will see our star disappear behind the Moon for about an hour.” NASA will have coverage of the flyby starting at 1PM ET.

There’s many uncertainties in this world, but apparently the future of Prime Video’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power may not be one of them.

According to a source speaking to The Ankler’s Lesley Goldberg, the show’s considered a “magical halo” by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. As such, it’s “proteced for its run” and likely to finish out the five-season arc Amazon pitched back when it first secured the rights. Getting those rights and making the show has been pretty pricey for the company, and the first two seasons had a two-year release gap. At time of writing, the show’s third season doesn’t have a firm date beyond “sometime in 2026,” and some have generally wondered how much more life Rings of Power had left in it.

Goldberg’s report also mentions a tradeoff to this five-season plan: for Rings of Power to live on, a spinoff that’d been planned for it has gotten axed. Major Prime Video shows like The Boys and Invincible have become small franchises unto themselves, and it makes sense the streamer would want to repeat that for its remaining big fantasy series. While Amazon may not get to build on Middle-earth after the show ends, Warner Bros. is determined to keep the Lord of the Rings train going with two new films: a Gollum prequel, and an interquel that also reunites the Hobbits after the events of Return of the King.

[via IGN]

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