TV GUIDE: The Guide to Weekend TV: Syfy's Neverland, Michael J. Fox on The Good Wife and More!
Dec 2, 2011
by Matt Roush
... Syfy has a tradition of "re-imagining" classic stories in over-the-top revisionist miniseries like Tin Man and Alice, both of which left me cold with their frantic, self-consciously edgy attitude. I much prefer the latest in the series, the two-part Neverland (Sunday and Monday, 9/8c), which adds clever new twists to the origin story of Peter Pan and Captain Hook while remaining unpretentiously faithful to the adventurous spirit of the original.
Mashing up elements of Dickens, Lewis Carroll, The Wizard of Oz and Harry Potter, Neverland introduces Peter (the very appealing Charlie Rowe) as the pied-piper ringleader of a gang of Victorian street-urchin thieves working for Fagin father figure Jimmy Hook (a robust Rhys Ifans). When they get their sticky fingers on a magical orb, it transports them into the magical "Neverland," where 18th-century pirates (led by Pushing Daisies' campy Anna Friel) lie in wait, along with mystical natives and glowing tree-spirit fairies including Tinker Bell (the voice of Keira Knightley).
There are fantastical sights, levitating swordfights and exciting encounters with giant crocodiles and spiders in this lush production, but the heart of the story is Peter's coming of age, his loyalties torn between his lost-boy buddies, the seduced-by-power Hook and the new friends (including Tiger Lily) he finds in this new world. As always, Peter is one storybook hero you never want to tell to "man up." He's happy just how he is, and I'm thrilled that Syfy let him be for a change...
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