Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Mike Willcocks I am currently writing a fictional novel on the life of Edward Teach and in doing so I have been researching this topic for little over a year. I thought I would watch this to get more in sight into the character of Blackbeard. However the research conducted into the period and into Edward Teach himself is very poor, almost as if they have only looked into one source for their research. I am only part way in to watching but am already slightly disappointed on the lack of structure and diffinative lack of depth. It feels more like a taster of a portion of pirate lifestyle than a factual telling of the life of Edward teach, or at least what we know of it. Seeing as this is supposed to be a factual representation and not fiction, very, very bad research.

Joy H Watching this much-repeated UK TV docu-drama serial about the infamous life and times of BLACKBEARD is a very rewarding experience. Factual accuracy can't be guaranteed as so little genuine information survives about this man, but what it does do very successfully is to deliver a new perspective about him that other programmes/films have not; and for this alone it's a very worthwhile production. It's also very competently shot and directed, which is a big bonus. Watching this you definitely get a different insight into the man that recreated himself as BLACKBEARD and went on to market his own persona with great success - unlike the mad savage he's usually portrayed as, we get the impression he must have actually been a very cunning and intelligent man who was perhaps a maverick well beyond his time in terms of understanding how to develop a brand image and how to promote that for best effect. JAMES PUREFOY is absolutely stunning in the role, and personally I find this his best performance to date, simply because he loses himself in it, which I've not seen him do successfully in his other roles. Perhaps it's due to the costume and big beard, and that there's no reliance on his good looks for the role, so he's able to project his performance beyond the facade of his own features. For sure his portrayal of BLACKBEARD is the best I've ever seen from any actor, and it's a real credit to him. As for the pirate accents; definitely they're accurate if any non-UK viewers see this drama - most English pirates of the time (inc. Blackbeard) were from the Bristol area of the English south coast - they did indeed speak this way, and to a lesser degree it's still the local accent today.

mr-insane I watched it on National Geographic it it was great. I was amused how Teach wanted to fight with music and loved it when he joked with Tom about the whole " Isn't the point of a joke to make people laugh?" thing. It was a pretty accurate telling of Teach. I never figured out what happened to Frenchy though and that really would've been nice to know. This movie shows that pirates were not the loving, funny, comedic "Pirates of the Caribbean" nor the stereotypic pirate that both movies displayed. Though close I'm pretty sure Blackbeard was decapitated during the fight instead of it being removed after though. Still no matter how much you prefer comedies or romances(which you will certainly not find here!) you have to love this movie.

Carl Abrams POSSIBLE SPOILERS (as it were) INSIDE I just saw this on National Geographic channel, and I was quite pleased with this movie.In our modern day era of crossing the sea via airplanes and large cruise ships and freighters, it's nice to see how, barely 300 years ago, sloops where the cannon ports were only a few inches above the waterline, dared to cross the Atlantic. Also, it nicely showed how a smaller vessel could catch and out sail a much larger one.It's also nice to show that the life of the pirate was not all glamor. Teach was more than adequately portrayed by the same actor that played the Prince in 'A Knights Tale'. The psychosis of Teach (Blackbeard) was that he didn't care about fortune in the least - he just wanted to be remembered. It may seem comedic to us nowadays, but in those days, the sight of someone with slow burning fuses or flames coming from out of his head would've terrified the average person - more so the superstitious sailor.There was only one thing left open, and that was the fate of Frenchy. I ended up watching the ending of this twice to try to figure that out, and didn't see it. There was a lot of historical accuracy, and the costuming and props were dead on. Very well done.