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Crusoe gets off the island
Instead of solitude and survival, TV series brims with adventures.
Philip Winchester stars as the famous castaway Robinson Crusoe in NBC's new adventure series "Crusoe." KELLY WALSH / NBC
By RITA SHERROW World Television Editor
Published: 10/12/2008 2:07 AM
Last Modified: 10/12/2008 3:46 AM
Instead of solitude and survival, TV series brims with adventures.
If you're expecting NBC's new action-adventure series "Crusoe" to hew closely to Daniel Defoe's 17th-century classic tale of shipwreck and survival on an uninhabited island, don't.
This is TV, after all.
For starters, NBC's Robinson Crusoe is forced to leave London and his beloved family and travel "to the new world in hopes of getting out of his impending debt." Once there, he survives all kinds of threats and rescues his Man Friday.
In Defoe's novel, Crusoe was an unmarried 19-year-old who ran off to sea in 1676, ended up as the world's most famous "Castaway" (apologies to Tom Hanks), rescued a prisoner from cannibals, converted the man to Christianity, taught him English and named him Friday.
"You know, we do take a bit of dramatic license, if you will, in terms of how we approach this character and the way he exists on the island with his partner, Friday," said executive producer Jeffrey Hayes, who shared a recent teleconference about the show with stars Philip Winchester and Sam Neill.
"It's definitely grounded in the book, but after that, we kind of bring into it a more contemporary tone as far as a period drama is concerned."
And rightly so. Thirteen hour-long episodes of a man alone on an island could make for boring (apologies again, Tom Hanks) television. And boring television makes for fewer viewers and lower ratings. That's not the goal of commercial broadcast TV.
To get those viewers, this "Crusoe" is all about action and adventure. He will be attacked by pirates, fight off cannibals and mutineers and, when he's older, fall in love and marry. Lush production values and well-drawn characters will also have viewers coming back for more.
"We have quite a tapestry of various characters of the period coming to the island over a period of time," said Hayes. "For an action-adventure story, you have to create characters. You have to create a back story. You have to create a love story. You just try to give it as many layers as you possibly can in a way that's going to appeal to a broad audience for television."
Not to worry, he said; the island won't have a revolving door of guest stars.
"That's one of the reasons we have the mutineers arc," Hayes said. "It puts people on the island without them coming back each week as a different 'Gilligan's Island'-type character."
Cast of Crusoe
Winchester (“Flyboys,” “Thunderbirds”) stars as Robinson
Crusoe, with Tongayi Chirisa as Friday, Anna Walton as
Crusoe’s wife Susannah, Sean Bean as his father and Sam
Neill (“The Tudors,” “Jurassic Park”) as his mentor and patron
Jeremiah Blackthorn.
The series was shot on location in South Africa and England.
Hooky
Star Philip Winchester, who was raised in
Montana, said he had no clue what it would be
like to be stranded on a deserted island. The
closest he came was a basketball trip from Bozeman
to Billings, a three-hour tour that lasted a
week and a half because of a massive storm.
“There was a lot of foosball and a lot of air
hockey played. But it was good times. We
missed a lot of school, and we did a lot of things
that didn’t involve sitting down at a table and
learning math and English. It was great.”
CRUSOE
When: 7-9 p.m. Friday
Where: NBC, channel 2, cable
channel 9
Rita Sherrow 581-8360
rita.sherrow@tulsaworld.com
By RITA SHERROW World Television Editor
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