NAUTILUS (Amazon Prime), a reimagining of Jules Vernes’ 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, is a triumph of a series where, in this retelling, the villains are the thinly disguised British East India Company, and the heroes are a group of multi-culti misfits escaped from a company prison in 19th century Bombay.

It’s a rugged road, as the designers of this first submarine steal it from the company and then are pursued to the ends of the earth, literally from the South Seas to Antarctica, by a 19th century version of the Dark Star, a company armored vessel named the Dreadnaught, recalling the early naval arms race between England and Germany that led to World War I.

It’s these kinds of allusions that make the series so powerful and, rather than straying from the Verne original, the series instead returns the anti-imperialist thrust of both 20,000 Leagues and its sequel The Mysterious Island. Both feature the Nautilus’s Captain Nemo’s actual identity as the Indian Prince Dakkar, in both novel and series, out to avenge the death of his wife and daughter. This is just one of the atrocities committed against Nemo and his crew by what was, in Nemo’s time, the largest corporation on earth and much more powerful than the British government.

The crimes of the company are legion and well-documented. Two Indians have watched their village burn. Nemo, while studying in England, returns to find his wife and child slaughtered, and a former company official has set up his own dominion on a South Sea Island, instituting what is in effect slavery.

The company was also the villain in Taboo (BBC, 2017) with Tom Hardy and now, as instantly summoning cruel and ruthless behaviour, lays a strong claim to be the representational 19th century equivalent of the Hollywood Nazis.

The most famous prior version, also by Disney, starred a brooding, downcast James Mason as a conflicted Nemo destroyed by his pursuit of vengeance. One of the many improvements that this current version effects is that slowly Nemo is able to let go of his blood-lust, and this is accomplished by his acknowledgment of and devotion to his ragtag crew.

These include a British upper-class woman, Humility, a budding scientist who wants to escape the masculinist prison of a forced marriage to Mr Pitt, a company board member who deserves his appellation, as he proves himself to be a ruthless representative of the company whose quest for domination includes both Humility and India itself.

Also along on the submarine are her French former anarchist maid Loti who strikes up a relationship with a Maori sailor, Soyin; a Chinese woman thrown in the Bombay prison; and  two Indians, one of whom refuses at first to betray his fellows when offered a chance to save his family, because that would involve “trusting the word of an Englishman.”

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The description of a supposedly all-powerful empire whose bloodthirsty corporations span the globe could not be more prescient in light of the current US war on all fronts, military, economic and cultural, against any challengers to its hegemony.

The Guardian, whose constituency should be a prime audience for this series, gave it a negative review based on its ill-defined secondary characters. It’s these characters who man the sub and flesh out Prince Dakkar’s claims against the company. They are not well-developed until later in the series, but from the moment they tell their stories they become far more than stereotypes.

The second season, with the company sidelined, was going to show Prince Dakkar and his crew taking on the might of the British navy as the empire attempts to build a submarine of their own to hasten their pursuit.

But alas, this is not to be.

Disney studios spent $300 million on the 10-episode series and then, rather than release the series on its streaming service Disney+, instead scrapped it as part of its attempt to cut $3 billion from its films and series, choosing to take the tax write-down that would accrue by wiping the series off its books, not to mention the cost of publicity to release the series in the US market.

Disney sold the series first in France, then Britain and Australia (it was the biggest-budget series ever filmed in that country) and then shipped it off to AMC and its streaming service AMC+ in the US.

Last year AMC also became the refuge of Warner’s already-shot-and-edited fourth season of Boon Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer which, together with Nautilus, are two of the most politically aware series in the current landscape.

Streaming was supposed to be a goldmine but increasingly the vein is running dry because the viewers, largely due to austerity and job layoffs, are not able to guarantee the overinflated profits their shareholders demand. In a time of cutbacks, politically charged series are often FIFO: first in, first out.

The first season of Nautilus is available to stream on Amazon Prime.