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Bess Hawkins burns the treasure map after her son has memorized it, giving the people pursuing Captain Flint’s fortune a reason to keep Jim alive. Robert Murphy’s six-part Treasure Island prepares this invention sensibly. At the Admiral Benbow Inn, Bess makes money by betting on the boy’s extraordinary recall, including his ability to reproduce Bible passages. His talent exists before the adventure requires it. Once the map is destroyed, that household source of income becomes a means of survival among pirates. The difficulty is that Jim’s usefulness to the plot develops considerably faster than his ability to direct it.
Murphy makes a second consequential change by letting Jim and Bess encounter Long John Silver before boarding the Hispaniola. When Captain Smollett introduces the ship’s cook, they recognize the dangerous man from the fatal confrontation involving Billy Bones.
The audience has little mystery to solve about his identity. Suspense instead depends on enforced proximity: the Hawkinses must travel with someone they already have reason to fear. It is a workable exchange, giving Silver’s friendliness an immediate threat underneath it. The series then has to build a relationship across that knowledge, rather than rely on a discovery to overturn one.
Bones briefly offers a gentler version of the pirate’s intrusion into their lives. Tomer Capone makes his protection of Bess against an angry customer and their subsequent dance feel like an opening toward companionship. His quick death leaves that possibility barely developed, though it helps establish Bess as a woman with desires that extend beyond arranging her son’s future. Before the treasure appears, she is considering marriage to Squire Livesey so Jim can become a gentleman. The wager over Bible passages and the marriage plan belong to the same practical intelligence: she finds ways to turn limited opportunities into security.
Taking Bess to sea is therefore a defensible expansion of the story. Jim’s independence now requires him to reconsider a parent who has kept them afloat, and Hayley Atwell supplies the assurance that makes resistance difficult. Her Bess can pursue Graham, fight Spanish pirates, and compete with men accustomed to controlling the situation.
The structural problem comes from the attention these activities absorb. Her romance and swashbuckling establish her own adventure while Jim often remains the valuable child accompanying it. The series gives him an exceptional memory, then seems surprised that viewers might require something else to remember him by.
Aaron Graham offers a different form of adult authority. Jack Huston’s restrained manner suits a man whose offer of passage looks generous and whose interest in the map complicates that generosity. Graham owns the Hispaniola, while Smollett commands it; his relationship with Jim develops through the position of benefactor and potential mentor.
Huston keeps that prospect attractive without making Graham’s allegiance easy to settle. The boy’s movement toward him becomes understandable as Bess’s calculations disturb Jim’s initial confidence in her. Accepting help can be a step away from parental control while leaving him dependent on another adult’s concealed purposes.
David Oyelowo makes Silver the most forceful competitor for Jim’s attention. His vocal authority and emphatic Jamaican accent can intimidate before violence becomes necessary, while his charm gives the boy a credible reason to remain interested.
Their occasional defense of one another lets affection enter a relationship governed by practical need. Silver wants the knowledge Jim carries, and the performance keeps that motive alive even when he appears protective. The distinction matters. A pirate’s decision to preserve his human map supplies tension; a mentor’s investment in a child’s future requires development beyond keeping him available.
After the midpoint, Jim receives additional room to become confident and distrustful on his own account. Tom Sweet registers that movement, but the season has given him comparatively little early identity outside his talent and attachment to Bess.
The later emphasis has to establish the protagonist while developing him. His doubts about Bess, Graham, and Silver provide the right material for that work, yet their competing ambitions have already occupied much of the dramatic space. The adult performances make each possible allegiance interesting without consistently giving Jim’s responses equal weight.
The ship does valuable work holding these relationships together. Its confined spaces make rival interests difficult to escape, and the physical details give the adventure substance: rats worry at biscuits, Spanish fire damages the vessel, and hard sunlight reaches into the brig’s shadows.
These textures also place the cast in an environment where comfort and safety are scarce. During a stop on a French-occupied Caribbean island, a confrontation between Graham, Silver, Jim, and Silver’s former associates benefits from camerawork moving through the unstable encounter. The threat comes from several people sharing a situation that could turn violent with a small mistake.
Skeleton Island still supplies effective danger. An unseen archer hunting Jim, Graham, and Silver’s party through the forest makes exposure a different problem from confinement aboard ship. The sequence prevents a simple diagnosis that the adventure loses all tension once it reaches land.
What weakens is the momentum between such incidents. Following the directions stored in Jim’s memory extends the search without sustaining the same concentration of rival intentions. The boy becomes increasingly central to the expedition just as the expedition becomes less urgent to watch.
The closing stretch gives the treasure hunt a definite resolution, which is welcome after the extended searching. Financial freedom also connects the prize to the future Bess once hoped to secure through marriage. With the treasure plot settled, the question left hanging is how Jim will choose among the futures that money has opened to him.
Treasure Island premiered on MGM+ on October 11, 2026, with a premiere on Paramount+ in the UK and Ireland following on October 12, 2026. The historical action-adventure series reimagines Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale as young Jim Hawkins and his mother Bess obtain a legendary pirate map and embark on a high-seas expedition fraught with shifting loyalties.
Where to Watch Treasure Island Online
Full Credits
Title: Treasure Island
Distributor: MGM+, Paramount+
Release date: October 11, 2026
Rating: TV-14
Running time: 60 minutes per episode
Director: Jeremy Lovering, William McGregor, Paul Walker
Writers: Robert Murphy
Producers and Executive Producers: David Stern, Scott Huff, Colin Callender, Daniel Gratton, Robert Murphy, Jeremy Lovering, Mark Hedges
Cast: Tom Sweet, David Oyelowo, Hayley Atwell, Jack Huston, Tomer Capone, Craige Els, Tristan Sturrock, Neil Pendleton
The Review
Treasure Island
Treasure Island gives Jim Hawkins a clever reason to survive, then takes too long to make him an active protagonist. Oyelowo’s dangerous charm and the competing adult agendas sustain suspense aboard the Hispaniola, while Bess’s expanded role creates a worthwhile conflict over independence. The island search weakens that momentum, and Silver’s practical dependence on Jim receives stronger development than his mentorship. An uneven adventure with effective individual sequences and a young hero too often waiting for his own story.
PROS
- Oyelowo’s charismatic, intimidating Silver.
- Jim’s memory creates well-established suspense.
- Textured shipboard setting and tense confrontations.
- Definite closure for the treasure hunt.
CONS
- Adult-centered storytelling delays Jim’s development.
- Silver’s mentorship remains underdeveloped.
- Extended island searching weakens momentum.
