'Treasure Island' Premieres on MGM+ With David Oyelowo as Long John Silver and Hayley Atwell Aboard

One of the most adapted adventure stories ever written is back on television, and this time it arrives with serious acting weight at the helm. The new six-episode Treasure Island premiered on Sunday, October 11, 2026 on MGM+ in the United States, before landing a day later, on Monday, October 12, on Paramount+ in the United Kingdom and Ireland. New episodes will follow weekly on both services, with the season running through November 15 in the US and November 16 in the UK and Ireland — a staggered transatlantic rollout that gives the show two separate opening-week conversations instead of one.

The casting is the headline. David Oyelowo steps into the peg-legged shadow of Long John Silver, the ship's cook turned pirate schemer who remains one of fiction's great ambiguous figures — charming, funny, terrifying and oddly tender toward the boy he both mentors and endangers. Hayley Atwell plays Bess Hawkins, an expanded version of Jim's mother, which is one of the clearest signals that this adaptation intends to widen the story beyond the map-and-mutiny beats audiences already know. And in the role that anchors the whole enterprise, Tom Sweet plays Jim Hawkins, the innkeeper's son whose ordinary life ends the moment a dying sailor leaves something dangerous behind.

A Classic Story, Rebuilt for Six Hours of Television

Robert Louis Stevenson's novel, published in 1883, essentially invented the popular image of pirates: the treasure map marked with an X, the one-legged seaman with a parrot on his shoulder, the talk of pieces of eight. In the story, Jim Hawkins and his mother come into possession of Captain Flint's treasure map after the death of the secretive lodger Billy Bones, and Jim is swept into a voyage aboard the schooner Hispaniola — a ship whose crew, it turns out, is thick with Flint's old pirates, quietly plotting to take the treasure for themselves once it is found.

Six episodes is an interesting shape for this material. Feature films have usually had to compress Stevenson's book into a sprint; a limited series can let the dread build — the slow realization aboard the Hispaniola that the smiling cook and his friendly crew are not what they seem, the shifting loyalties on the island, and the strange, genuine bond between Jim and Silver that makes the ending hurt in every version. Creator and writer Robert Murphy, working with production company Playground Entertainment, is building from a book that rewards exactly that kind of patience.

The directing team underlines the ambition. Episodes are directed by Jeremy Lovering, William McGregor and Paul Walker, a trio that spreads the season across filmmakers with backgrounds in atmospheric, character-led drama rather than pure spectacle. For a story that lives or dies on mood — fog, lamplight, a boy hiding in an apple barrel overhearing a mutiny — that is the right instinct.

The Cast Around the Map

Beyond the central trio, the ensemble fills out the novel's famous rogues' gallery and adds at least one significant invention. Tomer Capone plays Billy Bones, the haunted former first mate whose arrival at the Hawkins family's inn sets the entire plot in motion — a small role in page count that casts a long shadow over everything after it. Jack Huston plays Aaron Graham, a character created for this adaptation and described in official materials as a revolutionary spy, which suggests the series is layering period politics and espionage into Stevenson's adventure framework rather than treating the voyage as sealed off from the wider 18th-century world.

That addition matters because it hints at the show's larger approach. Atwell's Bess Hawkins being elevated to a principal role points the same way: this is not a page-by-page reenactment aimed only at viewers who grew up on earlier versions. It is a rebalancing — giving the people Stevenson left at the edges of the frame their own storylines while the famous set pieces, from the black spot to the stockade, play out on schedule. Whether the gamble fully works will be decided over the next five weeks, but the intent is clear and the cast is more than strong enough to carry it.

Why This Version, and Why Now

Prestige television has spent a decade strip-mining beloved books for limited series, with wildly uneven results, but Treasure Island is unusually well suited to the format. It is a coming-of-age story disguised as a pirate yarn: Jim's real journey is from a boy who trusts every smiling adult to a young man who has watched greed corrupt nearly everyone around him — including, complicatedly, the pirate he cannot quite bring himself to hate. Oyelowo, whose career has been built on morally layered authority figures, is close to ideal casting for a Silver who must be lovable and lethal in the same scene. Atwell brings the same steel she has shown across period drama and franchise work, and she gives the Hawkins family a presence the films rarely bothered with.

There is also a simple scheduling pleasure here. Weekly releases, running into mid-November, make this a genuine autumn appointment show rather than a weekend binge that evaporates by Monday. Viewers in the US can follow along on MGM+ through the live TV desk, while UK and Irish viewers get each episode a day later on Paramount+ — close enough that the conversation can stay shared, far enough apart that American viewers should tread carefully around spoilers on social media each Sunday night.

How to Watch and What Comes Next

The premiere episode is available now on both services, with the remaining five episodes arriving weekly through November 15 on MGM+ and November 16 on Paramount+. Episode titles for the season have been listed publicly, and the rollout structure means the finale lands just ahead of the Thanksgiving window in the US — historically one of the strongest family co-viewing periods of the year, and a natural fit for an adventure story parents may be discovering alongside their kids for the first time.

If the opening hour delivers on the promise of its casting, Treasure Island could become one of the fall's quiet word-of-mouth stories: a familiar title, treated seriously, with two of the most watchable actors working today facing off across a treasure map. We will be tracking the season week to week on our TV desk, alongside the rest of the fall's premieres in browse and our coming soon guide. For now, the map is open, the ship has sailed, and Long John Silver is smiling — which, as Jim Hawkins learns, is exactly when you should start worrying.

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