Treasure Island (1977 television series)

Infobox Film
name = Treasure Island
director = Michael E Bryant
writer = Robert Louis Stevenson (novel) John Lucarotti (screenplay)
starring = Alfred Burke Ashley Knight Jack Watson David Collings Anthony Bate Thorley Walters Roy Boyd Patrick Troughton Paul Copley
music = Carl Davis,
released = flagicon|United States 22 January 1990
country = UK / USA
language = English
imdb_id = 0100813

"Treasure Island" (1977) is a television adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous 1883 novel Treasure Island. It was filmed in 1977 on location in Plymouth and Dartford, and in Corsica, and also at BBC Television Centre at Wood Lane, London. Jim Hawkins (Ashley Knight) discovers a treasure map and embarks on a journey to find the treasure, but pirates led by Long John Silver (Alfred Burke) have plans to take the treasure for themselves by way of mutiny. This four-episode adaption by John Lucarotti, while particularly faithful to the original, adds an expanded narrative concerning the declining Daniel Hawkins, as well as clarifying Squire Trelawney's naivatee in trusting Blandly and Silver.

This takes place in the first episode; Billy Bones tempts Jim's father into arranging a two man treasure voyage, the corrupt shipping agent Ezra Blandly guesses their intentions and tips off Silver, who hoodwinks and then cruelly tortures the information out of a hapless alcoholic Mr Arrow . Billy Bones plans founder, and Hawkins snr catches pneumonia in the rain, which finishes him.

Lucarotti's additions to the original provide useful backstory, and the pirate idiom is sufficiently well captured for these addtions not to be too obvious.

While the director, Michael E Bryant, has clearly made sure that all the characters are much more strongly defined on screen than they are in the novel, and has cast most of the great TV character actors of the 70s, Alfred Burke is a quite astonishing Sea Cook; slick, violent, cunning, and dangerously plausible. The characterisation bears comparison with that of Robert Newton.

Cast

*Alfred Burke as Long John Silver
*Ashley Knight as Jim Hawkins
*Jack Watson as Capt. Billy Bones
*David Collings as Blind Pew
*Thorley Walters as Squire John Trelawney
*Anthony Bate as Dr. David Livesey
*Roy Boyd as George Merry
*Patrick Troughton as Israel Hands
*Stephen Greif as Job Anderson
*Talfryn Thomas as Tom Morgan
*Tim Condren as Seamus O'Brien
*Richard Beale as Capt. Alexander Smollett
*Roy Evans as Richard Joyce
*Brian Croucher as John Hunter
*Royston Tickner as Tom Redruth
*Edward Peel as Abraham Grey
*Jo Kendall as Sarah Hawkins
*Terry Scully as Daniel Hawkins
*Christopher Burgess as Black Dog
*Ena Cabayo as Louisa Silver
*Stephen Boswell as Dick Johnson
*John Bascombe as Ezra Blandly
*Keith Bartlett as John
*Max Faulkner as Sgt. Dance
*Linal Haft as Joshua Arrow
*Henry Knowles as Bill
*Derrick Slater as Tom
*Clive Wood as Dirk
*John Dearth as Jeb

External links