Mysterious Island
7.1IMDb307 votes
6.8TMDBMysterious Island is a Canadian television series inspired by Jules Verne's novel L'Île mystérieuse. It aired for one season in 1995. The series begins similarly to the novel. A group of refugees trying to escape the American Civil War in a balloon ends up stranded on a remote Pacific island, where they manage to create a comfortable life while waiting for a passing ship. As time goes on, they grow suspicious that an unseen force is watching and manipulating their actions. The main distinction between the series' protagonists and those in the novel is the introduction of a female character, the wife of Pencroft. The unseen observer, Captain Nemo, is more involved and less benevolent than in the book. He monitors the island using steampunk-style closed-circuit television and other advanced gadgets, treating the castaways as human lab specimens, altering their environment to test their behavior under pressure. As the series unfolds, his experiments become increasingly extreme as their ongoing cooperation jeopardizes his theory that all humans are fundamentally selfish and untrustworthy. In the series finale, Nemo seemingly succeeds in breaking up the group; however, this turns out to be a trick by the protagonists, who are now convinced of Nemo's existence. After infiltrating his hideout, Nemo confesses that the 'experiment' is ruined and offers to return the castaways to civilization in his submarine. In a final twist, he sets sail without them, apparently leaving them alone on the island, free from his influence for better or worse.
