Michael Bay's Black Sails goes into production

So keen was Starz to become the home of Michael Bay's new show, Black Sails, it by-passed the pilot stage to commission eight episodes of the "gritty" pirate adventure series, due to air in 2014, straight off the bat.

Black Sails tells the story of Captain Flint (Toby Stephens) and his crew twenty years before their appearance in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, back when John Silver was younger, leggier, and presumably, less Long. Silver (Luke Arnold) is described as a fast-talking young man who joins the crew of The Walrus, having stolen a map to a Spanish Treasure galleon Flint is pursuing.

Filming has just commenced in Cape Town, which is standing in for the Bahamas' New Providence Island, described in the show's bumpf as "a debauched paradise teeming with pirates, prostitutes, thieves and fortune seekers, a place defined by both its enlightened ideals and its stunning brutality". 

The first episode comes directed by The Descent and Game of Thrones' Neil Marshall, written by Human Target's Jonathan Steinberg and Robert Levine, and executive produced by Michael Transformers Bay. Explosions come as standard.

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