Missing the adventure

Get your head out of your phone, and get your hands dirty! The Dangerous Book for Boys, published in 2007, seems like a great starting point for a TV adaptation. Authors Conn and Hal Iggulden taught young men classic skills like building treehouses, skimming stones, and making paper airplanes, and gave brief history lessons on topics like the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Amazon’s TV series of the same name is a squandered opportunity—a mushy mix of modern clichés and New Age spiritualism that pays brief attention to its supposed source material.

Recently widowed Beth McKenna (Erinn Hayes) desperately misses her husband, Patrick (Chris Diamantopoulos), a creative inventor, great dad, and the glue that held their household together. The youngest of their three sons, Wyatt (Gabriel Bateman), immerses himself in the book his dad left behind for the boys, its pages full of adventures, stories, and inventions.

But rather than inspiring real-life outings and explorations, the cherished book prompts Wyatt to have dreamlike conversations with his deceased dad in exotic locations like an African jungle, a submarine, and the surface of the moon. These scenes end up as occasions for Dad to give advice on girls, perseverance, and other life lessons. Where’s the adventure and danger the book’s title promises?

Some characters are one-dimensional or objectionable. “Don’t call me Grandma” Tiffany (Swoosie Kurtz) represents a new stereotype viewers may recognize: the single, aging baby boomer who sleeps around, makes foul jokes, and lives for self. In addition to her bawdy humor, Tiffany dishes out New Age spiritualism, with tarot cards, hexes, and odes to the almighty Universe that she is eager to share with her grandchildren.

My advice? Skip this TV show, but grab a copy of the book for your kids or grandkids. Make a few paper airplanes together, or take them fishing. There’s a lot of fun and adventure to be had in the great outdoors, and you don’t need this show to help you find it.