Sailing into the Sunset Trivia Quiz

Answer:

As sailing ships have become rather obsolete since the second half of the XIX Century, most TV shows involving ships that are seen "sailing into the sunset" have an historic background.

"Vikings" started on History Channel in 2013 and ran for six seasons. This series with Travis Fimmel and Kathryn Winnick is a condensed and romanticized version of the Ninth Century, the era in which the Scandinavians came south in their longboats, pillaged various sites in England, Germany, and France (to name only a few).

"Black Sails" (started 2014 as video-on-demand on multiple streaming platforms, including YouTube) is a TV series about pirates. Its story is considered a prequel to the novel "Treasure Island" by R.L. Stevenson. The main roles in the TV series were for Jessica Parker Kennedy and Toby Stephens.

"Crossbones" is a mini-series that ran for nine episodes on NBC in 2014. John Malkovich starred as the notorious pirate Blackbeard.

"Hornblower" was a series of eight TV movies based upon three of the novels in the "Horatio Hornblower" series by C.S. Forester, and aired between 1998 and 2003 on BBC. Ioan Gruffudd starred as the title character, a sailor in the Napoleonic wars who rose through the ranks from midshipman to lieutenant.

"The Onedin Line" (1971-1980) ran on the BBC for eight seasons. The protagonist James Onegin (played by Peter Gilmore) married Anne (Anne Stallybrass) to found a shipping company operating from Liverpool in the first half of the 1860s.

"Against the Wind" (1978) was an Australian mini-series about Mary Mulvane (played by Mary Larkin), an Irish peasant girl who was convicted for trying to repossess her cow (seized by the British army). She was shipped to the Australian penal colony in 1798, and had to do her term over there. The mini-series ran for one single season of 13 episodes, of which the second was entirely on the sailing ship.

"To the Ends of the Earth" (2005) was a BBC mini-series of three episodes about the 1812 voyage of Edmund Talbot (role by Benedict Cumberbatch) from London to Australia to take up a job as aide to the governor.

"Adventures in Paradise" (1959-1962) was released on ABC. In this TV series, Adam Troy (played by Gardner McKay) was an American military in the Korean War. After the war, he decided to stay in the Pacific and sailed in a schooner looking for passengers.

There are at least two TV miniseries named "Shogun" based upon the book by James Clavell. In 1980 the sailor captain John Blackthorne was played by Richard Chamberlain, in 2024 Cosmo Jarvis played the same role. Both series start with Blackthorne arriving in a sailing ship in Japan in 1600, and then getting involved in local politics leading up to the civil war between the daimyo Yoshii Toranaga on the one hand and Ishido Kazunari on the other hand.

"Barinia" (started 2015) is quite a different TV series by the BBC. Patrick and Narelle Stevens sail around the Mediterranean to explore the local cuisine. The Tv show is named after the sailing yacht.

As for the red herrings: "Cruising with Jane McDonald" (2017, BBC), "The Love Boat" (1977-1986, ABC) and "All Aboard" (1958, ABC Weekend) were all on a modern cruise ship. "The Adventures of Tugboat Annie" (a syndicated series from 1957) was of course set on a tugboat. "Victory at Sea" (1952-1953, NBC) was a documentary about naval operations in WWII. "Hangang" (2023) was a South-Korean production set on board of a police riverboat. "Containment 2020" was set on a container ship, and "Halley's Folly" is an American SF series (2023) set aboard a starship.