Captain Sabertooth — King of the Seven Seas is a 26-episode Norwegian TV series in the Captain Sabertooth franchise. The series can be seen as a prologue to the stage plays — though in a Broad Strokes kind of way — and mostly takes place in Port Abra, the village on the island known as "The Invisible Land'', where the pirate king Captain Sabertooth rules.
The main character of the series is the young orphan Tiny, who was found and rescued by the pirates when he was a baby, and since then has lived in Port Abra as a ward of Longfinger, Captain Sabertooth's first mate. Now ten years old, Tiny's biggest dream is to one day become one of Captain Sabertooth's men and be allowed to sail out with Longfinger on treasure hunts — but impressing the Captain enough to be given a chance isn't easy. Luckily, he makes a friend in the Indian girl Raveena, whom he nicknames "Raven," and the two get into various misadventures and Zany Schemes in order to find ways to impress the Captain.
This series includes all the pirate characters from the franchise — the fat, bumbling twins Wally and Wimp, the lazy Deadpan Snarker Benjamin, the Lethal Chef Tully — and also introduced a number of new characters to the franchise, all of them inhabitants of Port Abra. Most prominent are Tiny's rival Jon Bowie (who also wants to become one of Captain Sabertooth's men), Longfinger's Love Interest Rosa (Port Abra's weapons master) and Oliver, the general store keeper.
This series contains tropes of:
- Alleged Lookalikes: Wally and Wimp, even moreso than in most other productions. A lot of characters have trouble telling them apart (including Captain Sabertooth), but even though they dress identically it's very obvious that Wimp is taller than Wally. Longfinger and Tiny have no trouble telling which is which, however.
- Brains and Brawn: Minor antagonists Socrates and Darius are a classic example, though Socrates is definitely not the genius she thinks she is.
- The Bully: Jon Bowie, kind of, to Tiny — though the two become friendlier towards the end of the series.
- Casting Gag: Ole Tobias Tveit, who played Tiny in the stage plays, here plays Tiny's rival Jon Bowie — and the two are always competing about who will be the world's youngest pirate (the title Tiny has in the stage plays).
- Cannot Spit It Out: Longfinger and Rosa in the TV series. Tiny and Raven try to act as matchmakers, with mixed results.
- Gender-Blender Name: Socrates and Darius, who show up to antagonize the pirates in a couple of episodes, are both women despite having masculine-sounding names.
- Failure Is the Only Option: No matter how many times Tiny helps Captain Sabertooth out, and the Captain hints that he "might make a pirate some day" it's never enough to convince him to let Tiny join the crew. Tiny actually catches on to that in the latter half of the series and decides to give up and become a fisherman instead — though after a few episodes of this he regains his optimism and decides to keep on trying. And in the last few episodes, he does get to join the crew... as a galley boy, not as a proper pirate. Still, as Longfinger says, it's a start.
- Foreshadowing: The ongoing plot of Raven teaching Tiny how to read is not only the explanation for how, in stage plays and movies, Tiny is one of the few pirates who knows how to read, but it also foreshadows his role as a galley boy when he gets a temporary job of reading recipes for Tully (who can't read and therefore never follows the recipes).
- Handicapped Badass: Oliver has a wooden leg, but is still Abra's undefeated champion in leg wrestling.
- Hypocritical Humor: In one episode, Longfinger gets angry with Tiny for taking some of his things without permission, even saying "I stole these myself, fair and square!" The irony is not lost on Captain Sabertooth, who has a good laugh about it and says that Tiny is just following in Longfinger's footsteps.
- There's an extra layer of Hypocritical Humor here, because the show repeatedly shows just how angry Captain Sabertooth gets when someone steals from him.
- Haunted House: There is one in Port Abra; the boarded-up "witch's house." Nobody actually believe it's haunted; they just like to tell scary stories about the ghost of Isabel, who haunts the house. It turns out that the house is indeed haunted, but Isabel is actually a kindly ghost and a sort of wise woman who can answer the questions nobody else knows the answer to — but only Raven can see her.
- Heel–Face Turn: Jon Bowie warms up to Tiny and Raven, especially after he finds out that he gets horribly seasick even in calm weather, which makes him lose all desire to become a pirate — and this makes his rivalry with Tiny rather pointless.
- Karmic Nod: In one episode, Benjamin tries to shirk cleaning duties by having Tiny and Raven do it for him under the pretense of "showing them how to prepare a ship for a voyage." When they mess up, he ends up having to run back and forth covering everything up and preventing Captain Sabertooth from finding out what's happened. In the end he ends up having to do twice as much work, and get accused of being a weakling and a scatterbrain by Captain Sabertooth because he gets so out of breath and keeps having to come up with so many excuses. In the end he takes it philosophically, deciding that he probably deserved that, and "next time I'll just polish the brass myself."
- Lighter and Softer: The Captain Sabertooth franchise is famous for mixing goofy slapstick with kid-friendly horror and a rather "dark" look and atmosphere, helped by the fact that the stories usually take place at night. This series takes place during the daytime and (with the possible exception of some of the books and comics) is probably the lightest, least scary and least dramatic Captain Sabertooth out there. Justified in that unlike the stage plays and movies, it largely takes place in the pirates' home village and focuses much more on their lives when they aren't out plundering and robbing.
- Love Letter Lunacy: Happens when Tiny and Raven try to play matchmakers for Longfinger and Rosa — they write a love letter "from Rosa" to give to Longfinger; but Tully is the one who ends up getting the letter, and after having Gusto read it for him (he can't read himself) he thinks Rosa is hopelessly in love with him. It doesn't end well.
- Mythology Gag: Isabel the ghost ("Lillebøll" in Norwegian) is named after a character in a short theatrical production where two girl ghosts, Lola and Lillebøll, entertained children and had a visit from Benjamin.
- Papa Wolf: Longfinger, towards Tiny. Interestingly enough, Benjamin seems to be rather protective of him as well, though unlike Longfinger he doesn't dare to stand up to Captain Sabertooth for him.
- Parental Substitute: Longfinger to Tiny — of all the various versions of the franchise, this is the one that shows their surrogate father/son bond the strongest.
- Parents as People: At the same time, it's also the one that most clearly shows that while Longfinger is a good surrogate father for the most part, and clearly cares for Tiny very much, he has some serious flaws as a parental figure; he isn't there for Tiny as much as he should be and sometimes gives him plain bad advice.
- Platonic Life-Partners: Tiny and Raven.
- Right Behind Me: Longfinger, when Wally and Wimp seem to be losing respect for him because he's falling for Rosa, tries to re-assert his authority and claiming that She Is Not My Girlfriend — so guess who shows up right behind him in time to hear him say how little she means to him? Uh huh.
- Supreme Chef: Raven's parents, Gusto and Bella, run the inn at Abra Port and are hailed to be Bombay's best cooks. Captain Sabertooth at least praises their Chicken Tikka Masala.
- Terrible Trio: Jon Bowie and his two friends, the siblings Ebba and Simon, sometimes form this.
- That Poor Cat: In one episode, Longfinger is sitting at a table at the inn with Rosa, and rather nervously takes off his hat and throws it off-screen. Apparently it knocks over a stack of dishes, because the next we hear is the sound of dishes breaking and a cat yowling.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Raven is very seldom called by her real name "Raveena." Even her parents call her "Raven."
- Like daughter, like mother: Raven's mother's name is "Bela" but everyone in Abra calls her "Bella."
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Raven is a pretty clear one for Veronica from the stage plays, though notably without the romantic overtones.
- Unreadably Fast Text: In one episode, Oliver gives Tiny a book of "Pirate tricks." We get about a three-second look at a couple of the pages, and pausing the video reveals a detailed description of the pros and cons of knocking on someone's door in the middle of the night and then running away. The page ends with "Remember not to get caught, since this will often earn you a beating, or in worst-case scenarios, the plank."
- We Sell Everything: Oliver's store in Port Abra. Tiny even claims it in the first episode that "Oliver has everything!"
- Women Are Wiser: Raven, in her relationship with Tiny, zig-zags around the trope and occasionally subverts it; while she's on the whole more level-headed than him, she has plenty of moments when she's being the foolish one of the two.
- Rosa plays it fairly straight with Longfinger, though.
- And when it comes to Raven's parents, Bella is definitely the more level-headed one, while Gusto is more buffoonish.
