Review: in 'Treasure Island', David Oyelowo makes a truly menacing Long John Silver, Hayley Atwell becomes Jim's sword-fighting mother — and the show forgets the boy for half the voyage

This is a review. The new 'Treasure Island', created by Robert Murphy and launched by MGM+ this Sunday (11), takes plenty of liberties with Robert Louis Stevenson's classic. Jim Hawkins (Tom Sweet) now has a photographic memory, which his widowed mother, Bess (Hayley Atwell), uses to win money from customers at the run-down Cornish inn the family runs. When the pirate Billy Bones (Tomer Capone) shows up with Captain Flint's map and Long John Silver (David Oyelowo) enters the picture, mother and son set sail together for the treasure, with Jack Huston's character chasing the same map on the side.

The best card in the deck is Oyelowo: his Silver is charismatic, intimidating and layered, and his relationship with Jim, once it finally gets room, is the liveliest thing in the show. Atwell has fun as Bess, wry and handy with a sword, and the handsome sets avoid an overreliance on green screen. The problem is structural: in the first half, the journey belongs to Bess, and Jim functions almost as an object to be protected. Only at the midseason turn does the show return to the boy and start to feel true to its source.

It is also weighed down by repetitive writing, characters driven almost solely by greed and too little history between mother and son to justify the drama. The action scenes are perfunctory, and the CG blood cheapens the production. Themes such as slavery and revolt against oppression sit in the background, more as decoration than discussion. What remains is an adventure that is pretty to look at, held up by its cast, but that passes close to the 'X' on the map without digging deep. Score: 5/10