Neverland

Syfy’s miniseries takeoff on Peter Pan is a little all over the place, but mostly an enjoyable variation on the well-known story. Sometimes the deviations pose more questions and add too much bloat than being a clever new take, yet I still walked away from it thinking that this version did minor justice to one of my favorite childhood stories.

Set in 1906 London, Neverland sees Captain Hook and Peter Pan beginning the story out as a Fagin and Oliver Twist type of wandering thieves. Add in dimension hoping, the Philosopher’s Stone, a lost Native American tribe, warrior fairies, ten-legged crocodiles, man-eating spider/scorpion creatures, and the ending of this story being the beginning of the Peter Pan from J.M. Barrie’s novel. If that sounds like a lot of stuff going on in a small number of episodes, it is, and the series cannot sustain so many disparate strands, nor can it tie them together in a coherent manner.

Adding in Anna Friel’s manic pirate captain is all about scenery chewing and feels like her entire plot is a needless excursion from the main narrative. We didn’t truly need more diversions, let alone one which sees a band of pirates destroy the magic fairy tree looking for some rare mineral. But Neverland’s greatest strength and weakness is its ambition. For every charming piece of mythology that has added or spun out existing parts in a new way, there are hooky choices or undeveloped relationships that become shoved together in order to end where the tale everyone knows by heart begins.

The same goes for the special effects work, much like Alice, a large number of the sets are green screen. Sometimes this looks magical and like a storybook come to life, and at others like a group of actors clearly not interacting with the environment around them. At there’s more than a few times when it switches from one to the other within one scene and back again. A few of the fantasy creatures look quite lovely, Tinkerbell is pretty effectively done, but that crocodile is very much a TV budget creation.

At least Neverland isn’t afraid to explore the darker tones hidden in plain sight with the Peter Pan story. Barrie’s creation has an underlying melancholy and darkness that goes ignored in favor of the whimsy and fantasy action-adventure sequences. The actors go a long way to selling this darker tone and making the whole thing work. Charlie Rowe is great as Peter Pan, Rhys Ifans is even better as Hook, Bob Hoskins is a welcome sight while reprising his role of Smee, Q’orianka Kilcher makes for a solid Tiger Lily (even if she is given nothing much to do), and Keira Knightley gives a good vocal performance as Tinkerbell. It’s a mixed bag, but mostly charming and nicely dark. I say give it a look; it’s certainly miles better than Alice.