AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS BOOK TV

So what does this version of Around The World In 80 Days do well? For me, most importantly of all, it gives us real characters. The novel of Around The World In 80 Days has been a template for many versions, all of them different, and all of them fantastic in some ways – and not so fantastic in others.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS BOOK TV

Do you know what else doesn’t follow the book? Almost every film and TV version made of this story. With all this in mind, I can confirm that yes – this TV show doesn’t follow the book. In the middle of the US, towards the end of their journey, Fogg’s valet is kidnapped, and Fogg goes off to rescue him – leaving the reader at a small provincial train station with Inspector Fix, the most boring character in the whole book. Almost every time something interesting is going to happen, it happens off the page. The book consists of, sometimes for many pages, eye watering details on the schedules of trains that Phileas Fogg is going to catch. Although I will agree that Jules Verne’s story is fun in its way, there is no way that anyone can argue it is more interesting than this eight-episode romp. But I’m also just saying that I don’t see anyone complaining about the hot air balloon, and that wasn’t in the original story either.Īs for comments that the book is better, that argument I can take issue with. I’m not calling everyone who doesn’t like this production out for having a problem with Ibrahim Koma and Leonie Benesch, or a problem with the comments about race and sexism the show is making, because some of the critical reviews are definitely fair. I say these are thinly disguised, because many of the same commenters are attempting to hide behind opinions that the book is better, and the story doesn’t follow the book. Too many of the critical comments seem to me thinly disguised outrage that the production should include a black actor and a woman in the main trio of actors, or that it should try and comment on social issues relevant both to the time it’s set in and to us today. Rotten Tomatoes is being a bit kinder, but not by much. Imagine my surprise when I found that there’s a sizeable group of people who are actively shooting it down at the time of writing, it’s suffering from a very unfair 6.7/10 on IMDB. After I binged the whole thing, I did what any terminally online person does and went to see what everyone else was saying about it. But I don’tthink that the BBC’s new Around The World In 80 Days is in that category. That’s not to say that the retelling is always good. Old stories are told again and again, over and over, and they change depending on who is telling them and why they’re doing it. The reason I seem so hung up on the balloon – the second reason I mention it at all – is because it’s a perfect example of how stories change in the retelling. Even I don’t care, despite the paragraph I just wrote. The first reason I mention it is because no one, in the history of the world, has cared that Around The World In 80 Days now has to feature a hot air balloon. Even covers for re-prints of the novel feature hot air balloons. Still, because of that film, everyone thinks that there is a hot air balloon in Around The World In 80 Days and as far as I can tell, every adaptation since 1956 has featured the balloon. But, and here’s the kicker, even that balloon wasn’t a hot air balloon – it was actually a hydrogen balloon. Instead, a balloon first featured in the David Niven 1956 film adaptation. Did you know that in Jules Verne’s Around The World In 80 Days, Phileas Fogg never actually flies in a hot air balloon? The hot air balloon is practically synonymous with the story, but it never appears on the pages of the novel.

Around the world in 80 days book