Black Sails

The drama is nothing more than a video game, with a story secondary to the blood and sex.

The scenery, the spectacle, the set design, the costuming, and the camera work are all winning, but the pacing of the series (which is planned for a second 10-episode season) is nettlesomely slow.

Black Sails opens promisingly enough with a sea battle, followed by threats of violent upheaval aboard the Walrus, captained by the arrogant, aloof Flint (Toby Stephens). Too soon, though, the action moves onto land. And while Starz staples like graphic sex and savagery are hardly uncommon occurrences in the bustling debauchery of New Providence Island, Sails becomes stubbornly becalmed by its landlocked third and fourth hours, as tiresome wheeling and dealing triggers a bout of Restless Sea Legs Syndrome in the impatient viewer.

The cast is stunning, the music enticing. Yet Black Sails lands too quickly on an island (shot in Cape Town) and the best parts of the spectacle--the open sea vistas and the claustrophobic shipboard scenes--run aground.

Much of the time in the early episodes is spent on the preparations for this mission [for one last big score] and on laying out a complicated network of alliances and animosities, and it gets to be a slog. Helping to keep us interested are Mark Ryan, providing a comic touch as a grizzled quartermaster, and Luke Arnold as a not-so-charming rogue named John Silver, not yet Long.

Like most of [Starz's] shows, though, it's all flash and no substance, and the flash fades pretty quickly, no doubt right around the point the production accountant realized just how much it costs to film extended sequences with ships in water.

Black Sails is a handsome illusion at times, but it rarely finds its way beyond that.

[Viewers] figure there will be sex and nudity, blood and violence. Black Sails has most of that, but there isn't enough action in the first four episodes. If you give us a pirate series, we want to see ships going at it on the high seas.

At times Black Sails feels like it wants to be taken seriously as a complicated, premium cable drama (a la “Game of Thrones”). At other times, it feels more like cheesier, more niche material (a la “Spartacus”).

Black Sails is rigidly unspectacular, and it comes at the worst possible time for a show like this not to be very good.

This South Africa-lensed production might tempt adventure-seeking viewers to plunge into its crystal-blue waters, but despite some handsome aspects, the show ultimately proves as hollow as its CGI-rendered ships.