‘Black Sails’: Watch the premiere of Starz’s pirate drama now!

Can you not wait for some reason to get a dose of swashbuckling until Saturday night? Well, we have some great news for you now: Starz has just made the entire premiere for their new series “Black Sails” available online. You can watch the first episode for free over at the link here (provided that you are located in America), but we do have to caution you that since this is premium cable, there is going to be all sorts of stuff that other networks just can’t show.

In case you have missed the memo from the past several weeks, this series is in part a retelling of some of the days when piracy was at its peak, and there are going to be many characters from within the “Treasure Island” universe present. This is going to be a mixture of real-life pirates and some created by past authors and the writers today; in other words, it’s basically “Boardwalk Empire” or “Mad Men” but with ships and swords.

This is a show that we know Starz has quite a bit invested in at this time. It was not exactly cheap to shoot courtesy of the sets and the location in South Africa, and it is also coming at a time when the network does not have that sort of franchise series following the end of “Spartacus.” They’ve at least picked a smart time to air it in that there isn’t really any competition at all on Saturday nights, and those who have Starz are probably wealthy enough to have DVRs. Therefore, they can just set it to season pass, and come back to it whenever they want. What matters to this network is the brand interest across the board more so than just the total viewers on an individual show. Thanks to this premiere being made available early, the numbers right out the gate may not look that strong.

We are going to have more news soon on “Black Sails,” so be sure to check back for more on that.