Was a prequel to Peter Pan necessary? Nick Willing thought so when he wrote and directed Neverland. I'm not sure I agree.

Willing is no stranger to re-imagining classic stories, with miniseries Tin Man and Alice both under his belt. In his world, Peter and Hook start off in a very loving relationship, as mentor and mentee. Jimmy Hook (Rhys Ifans), an outcast of London society turned petty thief and overlord of a band of young boys, saves Peter (Charlie Rowe) from certain death, and Peter comes to love Hook. In the middle of a big ticket heist, a magical orb transports Hook and all the boys but Peter to Neverland, where they meet a group of pirates from the 1700s. The fiercest of them all is Captain Elizabeth Bonny (Anna Friel), who uses Hook's feelings for her to get what she wants. Eventually, a disagreement between Peter and Hook seals their fate and they become enemies, as we are all familiar with.

The most interesting part of Neverland was seeing how the director imagined the beginnings of Peter and Hook's relationship. Arguably, that's the driving relationship in the original Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, so it's good that Willing didn't veer too far off from that. I also liked that the aesthetics of Neverland and London were considerably darker than the bubblegum Disney version that seems to be the most popular. There are a lot of dark, mature aspects to the story, and Willing did a great job of letting that spread to the rest of the storytelling and the look of it.

Unfortunately, those are Neverland's only saving graces. The story, the writing, the acting is all otherwise bland, or woefully overacted (select Lost Boys are especially guilty of overacting). For fans of the 1991 Hook, Bob Hoskins reprises his role as Smee, but he sadly does not bring the magic of that film with him. There's a bright spot that has nothing to do with silvery "mineral dust," as Tinkerbell's fairy dust is referred to. Keira Knightley does the voice of Tinkerbell, but the actress who plays Tinkerbell never moves her mouth and kind of looks like a silver-painted American Apparel model, shaved head and all. Jimmy Hook has thin, stringy hair; it's Captain Bonny that gets the full lion's mane of curls. These are styling decisions that I felt fell flat.

If you're a die-hard Peter Pan fan, you might give this a try if you don't have anything else to watch on the nights it airs. Otherwise, stick with Hook, the Disney version, and of course the novel.