(CNN)What seems similar a not-necessary thought really turns into a beauteous bully 1 with "Around the World successful Eighty Days," adapting Jules Verne's caller into an eight-episode Masterpiece series, 1 already renewed for different voyage. David Tennant plays the improbable adventurer Phileas Fogg, successful a slick retelling that importantly updates and expands the story.
Naturally there's a ticking timepiece (and a terrific people approximating that by Hans Zimmer and Christian Lundberg) arsenic Fogg undertakes his planetary trek successful the 1870s, successful an impulsive effect to a situation from Bellamy (Peter Sullivan), an oily subordinate of Fogg's snooty nine secretly successful hopeless request of winning their high-stakes wager.
Where this "Eighty Days" stands out, however, is successful Fogg's companions. His not-really-a-valet French adjutant Passepartout (Ibrahim Koma), who, successful request of a job, lies to unafraid the gig; and an ambitious young journalist, Abigail Fortescue (Leonie Benesch), who are some mostly much resourceful than the starched English man they're accompanying.
The greater latitude and clip enhances the question aspects (after movie versions, featuring David Niven and Jackie Chan, successful 1956 and 2004, respectively), portion introducing much elaborate backgrounds and relationships among the cardinal trio fleshes retired the characters.
The idiosyncratic episodes person an anthological quality, from encounters successful Paris, Italy and India to the American West pursuing the Civil War, teasing retired the daring escapes portion confronting issues similar contention and colonialism.
Developed by Ashley Pharoah ("Life connected Mars"), this planetary co-production manages to bring a revised rotation to Fogg's relation arsenic a bored affluent guy, embellish Passepartout into overmuch much than a humble servant and inactive marque the erstwhile a sympathetic figure. That's acknowledgment successful ample portion to Tennant, a versatile histrion whose engaged TV docket has formed him arsenic everything from a demon ("Good Omens") to Doctor Who.
"You've undertaken this large travel and you don't adjacent cognize why," Fogg is told by 1 of the radical helium encounters, an reflection that yet leads to immoderate uncomfortable soul-searching astir his beingness and motives.
Granted, 8 hours of "Eighty Days" is simply a spot excessively much, but yet the bid not lone answers the "why" of doing a TV mentation but cleverly plants seeds for different season, arsenic improbable arsenic that sounds fixed the premise.
All successful all, not a atrocious day's (or 80 days) work.
"Around the World successful Eighty Days" premieres January 2 astatine 8 p.m. ET connected PBS.
English (US) ·