"A Journey in the Dark"

I was not a ‘normal’ little girl.

Where most girls my age spent their youth wanting to be princesses, vets or mermaids, I wanted to be a pirate. I am, of course, talking about the ‘romantic’ swashbuckling, earring and eyepatch wearing pirate, not the machine-gun toting Captain Phillips type. I mean frock coats and peglegs at dawn, Bristolian accents and gold teeth. To me, even at that young age, I wanted the freedom that seemed to come from a rum-soaked life aboard the Seven Seas. I wanted to look for buried treasure, sing sea shanties and find ‘glory’. I now know much more about pirates than I did then, about how hard life could be and how dangerous that life was, and I no longer desire to live such a life, but I have nonetheless carried that love of pirates with me into adulthood.

When I was twenty-one years old I was running a youth theatre in the local area and we put on a production of Treasure Island. I had adapted the book into a script myself and written in characters for the members of my company. It was the greatest show that we ever staged, with my set-builder of a dad literally building half a ship on stage that turned in the big reveal. The cast of almost twenty members loved every second too. Pirates are a uniting force.

My first experience of cinematic swashbucklers came with the film Hook (1991) when I was about three years old. I have always loved Peter Pan (Barrie, 1911) as a story and this film is potentially why. Yes, the pirates were villains, and yes, Captain Hook does awful things like kidnap children, but when portrayed so lovingly by Dustin Hoffman - can you blame me for wanting to join his crew? The pirate village of Hook was perfect to me in every way. I loved how they had made the island out of shipwrecked boats, how Captain Hook stamped his foot and the carpet unfurled, how everyone seemed to fear and love him all at once. To my little mind: pirates were awesome.

As I grew a little older and I began to find out more about pirates and discover them in other media, perhaps most notably through reading Treasure Island (Stevenson, 1883) and through other adaptations of Peter Pan: the cartoon from 1953 or the Australian adaptation in 2003. (come on, who didn’t have a crush on Jason Isaacs as Captain Hook?) The pirates in Peter Pan were clean-cut, cartoonish (even in live-action) and loveable rogues. There was something not quite real about them and perhaps that was the appeal. They were fantastical.

Then Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) came along and for the first time I really felt what it was really like to live a pirates life. I had experienced the ride at Disneyland Resort Paris over and over many-a-time since the age of 18 months, but now these pirates were flesh and blood. When I saw them on the cinema screen, after lying about my age to get in with my dad, literally larger than life, I fell in love with pirates all over again. Captain Jack Sparrow with his drunken charm; Captain Hector Barbossa with his loveable villainy; Will Turner in all his handsome broodiness. I was never really a fan of Elizabeth Swann, and I’m still not. I think that was because she was not a pirate in my mind, though her speech in At World’s End (2007) is alright I suppose.

Pirates of the Caribbean is really when I truly started to study pirates. I spent my pocket-money at nine years old on any and all fact books that I could find. I poured over them, learned all I could about what it meant to live a pirate life for real. I knew more about Edward Teach than my own teacher at school; knew the different ropes on the ship, the parts and what they were used for. You name it, I probably knew it. It really was a pirate's life for me. Pirates of the Caribbean and the subsequent sequels fuelled my love of pirates on screen well into my late teens and early adulthood.

However, then I began to crave more.

Whilst researching costume ideas for our production of Treasure Island, I stumbled across an advert for a brand new Starz show that had just begun airing. The show was called Black Sails (2014) and was advertised as a prequel to Treasure Island. Intrigued by the premise, I found the first few episodes that I had missed and settled in to watch. In case you hadn’t guessed, Treasure Island is one of my favourite novels of all time and any version of it is fine by me: from 1950s Disney to Treasure Planet (2002) to Muppets to the 2012 miniseries featuring Eddie Izzard as a flawless Long John Silver. Within three minutes of the first episode of Black Sails I was hooked. It was everything I loved about pirates, they were handsome, swashbuckling rogues, but at the same time they were gritty. Within the first half an hour of the first episode there is more violence and sex than the first full episode of Game of Thrones (2010).

Toby Stephens as Captain James Flint was suave, well-spoken, but undeniably dangerous. Luke Arnold as John Silver was cheeky, relatable and I couldn’t help root for him. Tom Hopper as Billy Bones, a much younger and stronger Billy Bones than that of the books, was sensible and level-headed. It was a perfect portrayal of my favourite characters, plus the women put Elizabeth Swann to shame. Hannah New as Eleanor Guthrie was ballsy and fiesty; Jessica Parker Kennedy as Max was beautiful and calculating. Don't even get me started on the absolute queen that is Clara Paget's Anne Bonny! I knew right then and there that I had found my new favourite show.

Yet it amazes me that so few people have heard of Black Sails! I got my family into the show almost immediately after I found it and we watched it in real time from then on, but whenever I mention it to anyone outside my nearest and dearest I am often met with raised eyebrows. It astonishes me when the show consists of such a delicate and perfected balance of character portrayal; one hell of a soundtrack; a plot driven narrative; adult themes and emotional moments; and stunning cinematography that looks as though it has come straight from a painting.

It appears Black Sails is fated to become one of those ‘cult’ shows people often reminisce about, but my god I will reminisce until I am blue in the face. If you, dear reader, are a member of this exclusive band of pirates who call themselves fans please don’t hesitate to let me know.

That is what I endeavour to post about. Sure, the posts may not be perfect, but they will by-God give this wonderful show the recognition it so craves and the justice it so deserves.

And if you need persuasion to pursue the series yourself in the meantime, I have two words for you, the only pitch that is needed for a show as deliciously complex, socio-politically prevalent, and as addictively groundbreaking as this: gay pirates.

“All this will be for nothing. We will have been for nothing. Defined by their histories, distorted to fit into their narrative, until all that is left of us are the monsters in the stories they tell their children.”