Hi! I hope you’ll have a chance to watch The Terror and that you’ll enjoy it as much as I have! It’s truly a self-contained work of art in a way that great films can be, but even the best TV shows only rarely achieve. 

As for whether it brings together all the elements of a classic adventure gone wrong story, I’m…. I’m not sure exactly how to phrase this so as to avoid sounding like I’m criticizing the show, because it’s definitely not a shortcoming, but… ‘classic adventure gone wrong’ is not, at its heart, what The Terror is. While that is the setting of the story, the actual narrative structure is very firmly rooted in the horror genre. I think the show is stronger for it- while they could have not based it on the novel, and just gone straight historical and have the antagonist be ‘the crushing weight of realization that they’ve made a terrible mistake and are going to die slowly and horribly and no help is coming,’ having there be an actual creature hunting the characters injects an immediacy and tension into the story. It doesn’t lose the grim and inescapable specter of scurvy, frostbite, and slow starvation, but it takes that historical reality and adds the classic horror trope ‘being prey’ to it. The creative team of the show strike a delicate balance between these two very emotionally distinct sources of conflict, and use the interpersonal conflict between the characters to connect them. It’s deftly handled (and very impressive) writing, but the overall effect is a story that has a very different emotional arc than, say, the story of Scott’s last expedition or the wreck of the whaleship Essex. 

TL;DR: The Terror uses the ‘expedition gone wrong’ as a springboard but has the narrative conventions of the horror, rather than adventure, genre. And I think the end result is great!