First, I have to say good on Eddie Izzard for not trying to copy John Newton's Silver. On the other hand, it would have been staggeringly foolish to try that *again* in this day and age. No, Izzard delivers a new interpretation of Silver and does rather a good job of it.
In many trivial ways, this production is more faithful to Stevenson's classic than the as of yet undefeated champion of dramatic productions: the Disney 1950 film. (More running time, I guess) In some important ways it's even more faithful, and even adds a few interesting ingredients. We get to meet Capt. Flint (both of them). We also get the meet the "woman of colour" that Stevenson had married to Silver--something Disney didn't acknowledge. Oh, and speaking of the race card, it was played with the likes of Billy Bones and Mr. Arrow (black as a bucc'neer's colours in bilge water, they is!) I guess it does add an important bit of realism, now present in a lot of recent 18c nautically-themed productions.
But in some serious ways it diverges from the the book. I can't say whether or not it was a mistake to make Trelawney a partial crook and "Bible-reading hypocrite". (It was definitely a mistake to have a gentleman using "who" in the objective) It certainly was important to the ending. Oh yeah, that ENDING!!
The ending loses it 2 stars easily (though as a TI purist, it was a challenge not taking off 4). It's perfectly understandable that they not use the book's ending, Disney didn't even do that, but this unique ending takes the whole story off course and changes the genre from pure adventure to something of a morality tale. In making a miniseries, there was the opportunity to rehabilitate the Treasure Island myth, as was done in 2000 with Frank Herbert's Dune. Unfortunately, what we have is probably the least Stevensian Treasure Island production to date. Sorry.
