Roush Review: Buy a Ticket for a Trip ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ on PBS
Review
Around the World in 80 Days
It’s like The Amazing Race for the Victorian era. The clock is always ticking in a divertingly old-school Masterpiece adaptation of the Jules Verne classic, Around the World in Eighty Days, sustaining a sense of wonder about the potential for technological mobility before the age of planes and automobiles.
Trains, however, play a big part in novice traveler Phileas Fogg’s (David Tennant) quixotic 1872 odyssey to circle the globe in never-before-seen haste. So do hot-air balloons, and boats, and camels. And that’s just the first three (of eight) episodes.
(Credit: Tudor Cucu – © Slim 80 Days / Federation Entertainment / Peu Communications / ZDF / Be-FILMS / RTBF (Télévision belge))
Tennant, a versatile favorite of Doctor Who and Broadchurch fame, nicely manages the transition from stiff-upper-lip fussbudget to wild-eyed adventurer, blurting, “I’ve never felt so alive in my life!” after a near-death experience during a revolution in Paris.
Fogg’s in good company with his mercurial French valet, Passepartout (Ibrahim Koma), and, new to the tale, an ambitious female journalist (Leonie Benesch) who knows a good story when she sees it.
Filmed in South Africa and Romania, this Around the World frolic might be just the ticket for those whose wanderlust was curtailed in recent years. Buckle up.
Around the World in 80 Days, Premieres Sunday, January 2, 2022, 8/7c, PBS (check local listings at pbs.org)
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A
David Tennant's always worth a watch and he looks like he stepped right out of an illustration of Phileas Fogg.
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J
I had to take a second look to realize that that WAS Tennant in the photo. Just a change in haircut, and a mustache, and he looks like a totally different man. I agree, he's always worth watching.
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O
It is not a literal interpretation of Verne's novel and is quite different than the great film adaptation in the 1950s, but it is still worth watching for several reasons. Solid production values, good acting, and a surprise-a wonderful score by Hans Zimmer and Christian Lundberg. There is much more development of characters here, but it still retains a sense of escapist adventure...and we need that! And it all includes a mini-Western, and a good one too. And the score is fun!
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J
PBS usually brings a quality product, no matter what. I'm a little dismayed at the addition of a new character, and of course that character has to be a female. That's a very "broadcast TV" thing to do, because of course there can't be a single friggin' drama on TV that doesn't have some sort of "ship" potential.
Oh well, again, PBS always brings the quality, so in this instance I'm sure the new angle on this tale won't be too intrusive and may actually add something.
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A
She's not quite a new character, but rather a spin on the novel's male Detective Fix. Just as Passepartout has been "reimagined" as a character of color -- although here she's a reporter instead of an inspector for Scotland Yard, perhaps since they couldn't believably pretend a woman could've held such a position then. I don't usually mind such casting for diversity's sake because it's just more interesting to have a variety of faces on screen.
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J
I see now. I was going on the words in the article, that the character was "new to the tale," so I assumed she was a totally new, 21st century addition.
Speaking of women who couldn't believably be in certain positions, on the show The Alienist, Dakota Fanning played a secretary at the NYC police department in the 1880s or 1890s. She was smarter and more effective than half the police force, but of course, she could never be a police officer; in fact, she was the only woman working for the police at the time, which was scandalous in itself.
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R
yeah that comment made me think of the alienist.
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