Izzard: I don't play him for comedy, yet he's funny because he's so matter-of-fact about murder. Was it tricky keeping Long John on the right side of camp? TV Guide Magazine: Despite that, your trademark sass shines through. In fact, our approach here is much less classic Treasure Island and much more GoodFellas. They were extremely well organized, like mafia gangs. Izzard: We certainly have softened and romanticized them, haven't we? It's probably the Disney effect, though I must say I went on the Pirates of the Caribbean and had a very good time! The truth is, pirates were drunken, murderous bastards who didn't give a f- about anyone but themselves and would not hesitate to rip you up. Somehow they wound up getting a good rap. TV Guide Magazine: This Treasure Island reminds us how truly frightening and bat-crap crazy pirates actually were. Izzard gave us the lowdown on his killer role. The plot: Young Jim Hawkins (Regbo), who is in possession of a map to buried treasure, takes a swashbuckling voyage to the West Indies, little knowing that the ship's cook (that would be Long John) and the seemingly benign crew are actually cutthroat buccaneers determined to get to the gold first. The four-hour epic, which also stars Elijah Wood, Donald Sutherland and newcomer Toby Regbo, has already won big ratings in England, where it ran as a miniseries. This reference has been removed.Shiver me timbers! The original pirate heist caper, Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, gets a muscular, edge-of-your-seat reboot on Syfy with Eddie Izzard - yep, the cross-dressing Brit comic - as that notorious peg-legged plunderer Long John Silver. In the original, Abigail Thaw was miscredited in the role of the soprano. This article was amended on 3 January 2012. And then she dunnerself too, after singing her aria that works, with the whole Madame Butterfly thing going on. Whodunnit then? Ah, the soprano herself, driven by jealousy and passion. And there are lots of nice little nods to the future – the car, the beer, the women, the music. But Shaun Evans is beguiling in the title role – certainly he has more presence and charisma than Kevin Whately. The story is a bit loopy – orgies involving schoolgirls and high-ranking politicians, a Pygmalion-style bet, sisters who turn out to be mothers, suicides that turn out to be murders, all bathed in Puccini. Post-Morse has been pretty much bled dry with Lewis, so now we're going back to before, and a young detective on his first posting in Oxford in the mid-60s. The prequel is the new sequel, have you noticed? There have been loads recently – for Only Fools and Horses, All Creatures Great and Small, and … well, loads of other things. Robert Louis Stevenson, Captain Flint, Davy Jones, will be turning in their graves/lockers. They've changed it, not just unnecessarily but unquestionably for the worse, and that's a travesty. Not just a couple of Hollywood stars then, but a sugary soppy Hollywood ending too. In the book, he escapes, with a sack of coins, worth three or four hundred guineas – of course he does, he's a frigging pirate. They're saying: yeah, so it's what's driven us across the Atlantic, driven us to kill and to risk being killed, for page after page (and for nearly four hours of television), and suddenly we're not interested because, you know what, it's more bother than it's worth, and suddenly we're all better, non-materialistic people … No, I'm sorry, that's ridiculous. And, apart from Squire Trelawney, who goes down with it, the others – including Silver – let him do it. But then, at the end, Jim suddenly has a moral epiphany, realises that treasure isn't such a good thing after all, and throws it all over the side of the Hispaniola. Apart from the clunky cutting from the Caribbean to what Jim's mum and Mrs Silver are up to back in England, this is pretty faithful to the original. It's not as if this is a totally new and original take on RLS, such as, say, Steven Moffat on Sir ACD (though that's an idea, Treasure Island but with modern Somali pirates, I like that). But what they've done to the end really does. No, of course the colour of the parrot doesn't really matter. Bad casting – it's all about the look and the name over how suited to the part they are. And that could well be because scarlet macaws aren't known for mimicry or their ability to talk. And the macaw? It's hard to say – he doesn't say anything, not even "pieces of eight". Wood as Ben Gunn? Too hobbity for a rough sailor. I'm not sure about Izzard as LJS – he's very watchable but simply too nice.
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