I Watch TV: Around The World In 80 Days

Around The World In Eighty Days

David Tennant and a couple of companions find themselves in a new place every episode, where they have to figure out how to move on, solve some problems, maybe learn some lessons about life, love, friendship and so forth.

But it’s not quite steampunk Dr Who, though there are commonalities thanks to sharing BBC teatime family adventure vibes. It’s also not Jules Verne, though it pulls a lot of ideas from here and there in his novel, the plot, motives, characters and romance are very different.

In case you’re not familiar, Phileas Fogg, an Englishman very set in his ways, is reading the Daily Telegraph in the Reform Club, and comments on an article that suggests it is now possible to circumnavigate the world in only 80 days. His two friends (Fortesque, editor of the Telegraph and Bellamy, who puts everyone down) offer some doubts and this leads to a wager between Fogg and Bellamy.

Passepartout, a French waiter at the Reform Club, intercepts Fogg’s request for a valet to accompany him. Abigail Fix, Fortesque’s daughter and the journalist who wrote the story about 80 days, also joins him. All three set off for a wacky adventure.

It’s a little more complicated than that! Fogg has received a postcard with the word “coward,” on it, which spurs him into action (he once promised to go on an adventure twenty years ago and… didn’t). Passepartout has been running from a number of things, and in Paris meets his brother. Paris is still in violent political turmoil, the Commune has only recently been put down and through a complex and frankly ludicrous yet touching series of events Passepartout’s brother dies and Fogg saves the President of France. As they journey on Passepartout has to confront his own nefarious past and the cost in lives this journey is causing. Meanwhile Fix, trying to be a journalist to make her father proud, learns that he is not someone to look up to and also learns to enjoy adventure for it’s own sake and maybe… romance?

Bellamy’s investments turn out to have gone bust, and his last chance is the wager with Fogg. So he cables an agent to stop Fogg, which drives many of their problems in the middle episodes.

In the second episode there’s a boy who has a toy rocket based on Jules Verne’s novel From The Earth To The Moon*. In the last episode Abigail Fix reads in the paper about a mysterious attack on shipping, a reference to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. If Verne exists, and so does Fogg, does that mean his novels are based on real events**? As the show has been renewed for a second season this suggests several potential plotlines.

But is it any good? Well yes. There’s less train-and-ship episodes than might be expected. Basically one where the train has problems, and one where they have problems on a ship. In most cases once they get on the scheduled route it stops being interesting and we just go to the next episode. Shipboard scenes tend to be at the end of an episode where they get to gather their thoughts. Each episode is more-or-less where something goes wrong and they have to solve a problem or use an unexpected type of transport to go on. The music is good, and the use of the theme song's ticking and clock bells occasionally verges on the brilliant. And we know the story. So when we see the day of the voyage on screen and the music we know how it will be used in the last episode. And... it still works!

There’s only a slight acknowledgement of class; Fogg as a gentleman is perfectly willing to overlook such things, Fix as a New Woman is trying to place herself outside it, and Passepartout, black, French, vaguely Republican, moves seamlessly from servant to companion. Other people are interested in class etc but Fogg is very rich which trumps almost everything. There’s also some occasional racism (shown to be bad) and critique of empire (eh) which is swiftly handwaved away.

How close is this to Verne’s novel? Not greatly. Many of the incidents take inspiration from the novel, and many more from later adaptions. But this is its own story and Fogg’s troubles with the law are less ridiculously contrived, having malice rather than chance at the root.

Watch This: Family-friendly TV adventure, charismatic cast, cool sets and settings
Don’t Watch This: It’s about a toff and his mates on a ridiculous journey through a barely recognisable caricature of the 19^th century

* That’s what they say, the rocket does not actually resemble the method of space travel described in the novel.

** If so then three men have gone to the moon, circumnavigated it, and returned, an Apollo 10 style mission, before anyone has gone around the world in 80 days. In fact Barbicane, Nicholl and Arden will have circled the earth more than once on their ten day mission, beating Fogg by six years.