Treasure Islandthe 1883 boys’ adventure novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, is in the public domain. This means that anyone can do pretty much whatever they want with it, without having to worry about paying the rights. This is important information to have for MGM+’s new six-episode adaptation. It’s impossible to say with certainty whether “free” was a factor in the decision-making process that led to this difficult and intermittently inspired work, but it certainly didn’t hurt. No one asked for this, no one needed this, and over the course of five hours and changes, the show tries and fails to defend its own existence. At least producing it was slightly cheaper than it might have been if the producers had opted for a copyrighted nautical swashbuckling tale.
Give the series this: It’s an adaptation that’s not afraid to deviate from its source material, whether or not those deviations are wise. While protagonist Jim Hawkins (Tom Sweet) is still a young man working with his mother running an inn, he and his mother earn extra money by exploiting Jim’s photographic memory, a talent that comes in handy when dealing with extremely flammable treasure maps. In an even more significant departure from the novel, Bess Hawkins (Hayley Atwell) has her role greatly expanded, transforming the character from a background figure in Jim’s journey to manhood to a figure who almost takes over her son’s protagonist role.
It’s an odd choice, one of many in the series that never quite reaches its potential. Atwell is determined and energetic, and there are early hints that her fixation on improving Jim’s status (and, hopefully, her own) makes her willing to compromise herself in convincingly dramatic ways. But it never goes beyond the surface. At one point, the character explains how her status as a woman robbed her of the ability to choose her own path like a man. It is a didactic monologue, the truth of which is so obvious and incontrovertible that it is almost possible to ignore how little it has to do with its surroundings.
This is the fundamental flaw that haunts all attempts here to refresh Stevenson’s original tale: none of them add much beyond novelty. Take Aaron Graham (Jack Huston), a character created for this version of the story. A merchant with secrets of his own, Graham serves as a potential role model for young Jim, facing off against the more malevolent and criminal Long John Silver (David Oyelowo). It’s an intriguing idea, but the series stops halfway through for an hour-long adventure that has nothing to do with the treasure that’s supposed to motivate all of this; and while this break offers a chance to delve deeper into Graham’s character, his disconnection from the main narrative makes it difficult to care much about him.
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