"Around the World in 80 Days" (review)
Jan. 20th, 2022 02:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shivverI had been planning to wait until Around the World in 80 Days came out on DVD or streaming to watch it, because, being unfortunate enough to have been born in America, the only option for viewing it is one week at a time on PBS' Masterpiece Theatre - if we had TV service at all, which we don't. However, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dieastra came to my rescue and found a way for me to see the whole thing! She's a star!
Spoilers ahead, though not for the first couple of paragraphs.
First off, I have to say that I'm not familiar with the original material: I have never read the Jules Verne novel, nor seen any of the adaptations, so I went into this with no expectations. Second, I have read some of the user reviews on IMDB, which seemed to be divided into three categories: 1) This is the best ever! 2) This is nothing like the book and they totally wimped Phileas out and it sucks! 3) This is some of the worst BBC SJW crap ever and it sucks! Given that, I decided it probably wasn't any of those three, so I went into it with few expectations but wondering how much SJW crap there actually was.
As a side note, I've been told that this was a joint project between companies in France, Germany, and maybe a couple of other countries (Italy?), so this isn't actually BBC crap of SJW or any other type, though the BBC is broadcasting it.
Okay, this is where the spoilers start.
I just checked out the summary of the novel on Wikipedia so that I can accurately say that the show changed Passepartout, Phileas Fogg's white French valet, to being black, and they eliminated the subplot of Detective Fix chasing Fogg around the world trying to slow him down and apprehend him for a crime he thought he committed in favor of giving Fogg a second supportive companion in the form of Abigail Fortescu. Abigail is his friend Fortescu's daughter and an aspiring journalist, who follows Fogg to report on his journey; for story reasons, she adopts her mother's maiden name, Fix, as her own. So, with two of the main characters changed from white men to a black man and a woman, you can see why people think this is an SJW show.
They also changed Fogg. I don't know first-hand what the original character was like, but I would imagine, as an adventuring character written in the 19th century, he was probably the confident high-class Englishman who charged and met every setback head-on. This Fogg is a sheltered high-class Englishman who never had to fight for anything in his life and, when confronted with anything slightly uncomfortable or challenging, immediately backed down and ran away.
So, we have a timid Englishman, a black man with a mysterious past, and a woman trying to prove herself, traveling around the world through the different parts of the British Empire - a world that Fogg believes is inhabited by ignorant natives being educated by the civilized British. Depending on how it was handled, this could have been a disaster of a show, but it wasn't. It was a fun romp, and yes, it did deal with some difficult issues, but it did it on a personal level. It didn't challenge the British mindset - it challenged the characters to face their assumptions and learn from them.
What I think it's really worth watching for is the development of all three main characters. Phileas is an unapologetic English high-class arse, but he learns a lot from his travels and gains the courage to claim his prize and to be gracious to his adversary, his "friend" Bellamy with whom he'd made the bet to travel the world in 80 days and who tried to make him fail by sending thugs to slow him down or kill him. Passepartout learns to trust his friends and not run at the first sign of danger (or friendship). Abigail loses the naivete of the sheltered rich Englishwoman and starts shedding her assumptions of a kind world she's always had. Mostly, though, the three grow together without becoming the perfect saccharine family: Fogg is still an arse, Passepartout is still shady, Abigail is still optimistic. (Also, the performances are stellar. DT's always awesome, but Passepartout and Abigail (sorry for not going to look up their actors, but I know P is Ibrahim Koma) were also a joy to watch.)
Overall, I really enjoyed the show, but I can't really give it a rave review because, well, the individual episodes didn't sit well with me. Part of the problem was that they were rather predictable. For example, the opening credits display a clock with figures showing all the places they are going to, and one of them was the American Wild West. I immediately thought, "Oh, they're going to encounter racism there, probably a Klansman or three, and Fogg's going to have to decide if he really agrees with them, and will realize that Passepartout's shown him that color doesn't matter." Sure enough, that's what that episode was about. Similarly, the train episode: you meet the Italian man with the son he keeps yelling at - the man hates Fogg, but the son immediately cleaves to him - and it was a flashing sign that something would happen to the son, to get the man to realize he loves him and has been treating him badly. Bonus trope: Fogg figures out how to save the son, and now the man respects him.
I was also put off a bit by how fortuitous or serendipitous things were. The show implies that the travelers only stop in very few places - but they encounter a difficulty in each one. One was an earthquake that just so happened to have broken the railroad bridge the day before; another was that they'd gotten on a train that was sent down a track that had never been completed, so they were forced get off and walk to the nearest town - which happened to be having a wedding which went wrong. And probably the worst offender, deep in Araby, Abigail happens to run into the one English woman for hundreds of miles, and she happens to have been wronged years ago by Abigail's father, who had at one point been a suitor. Yes, that's the nature of the format - there were only eight episodes, so they could only show eight locations and something had to happen in each of them - but for me at least, it required a certain suspension of disbelief. Perhaps if it had been ten episodes so that there could have been two social situations while traveling, that might have felt better.
(It's amazing, by the way, how fast those trains could stop - to avoid going over the bridge, to not go off the unfinished track, to not run over Fogg, who was standing in the middle of the tracks waving it down...)
Another thing that felt completely serendipitous was Fogg's solving the broken bridge problem with two minutes and two small pages of equations in his notebook. Setting aside the fact that the show did not set up the idea that he was a gentleman scientist (and in fact, later on went through great pains to explain that he did nothing with his life except read newspapers at the Reform Club), it's not likely that anyone could have come up with that assessment that quickly and with that little knowledge of the construction of the bridge. (And it's a bit out of character for Fogg, who never had the courage to face any problem, to have stated his confidence in his solution.)
All in all, I enjoyed the show and will definitely be rewatching it when I get a DVD copy. They did a good job of creating interesting characters and having them grow and learn from each other, all within the Jules Verne framework - I'd like to say "reimagining the story with modern ideas" but that's pretentious. I can ignore the quibbles I have with the episodes if I imagine that it's meant to be more Doctor Who-like - and the ending kind of implied that was the direction they were going for the second season, where Fogg, Passepartout, and Fix are going to be Victorian explorers seeing the world. And that just might be a whole lot of fun.
dieastra came to my rescue and found a way for me to see the whole thing! She's a star!Spoilers ahead, though not for the first couple of paragraphs.
First off, I have to say that I'm not familiar with the original material: I have never read the Jules Verne novel, nor seen any of the adaptations, so I went into this with no expectations. Second, I have read some of the user reviews on IMDB, which seemed to be divided into three categories: 1) This is the best ever! 2) This is nothing like the book and they totally wimped Phileas out and it sucks! 3) This is some of the worst BBC SJW crap ever and it sucks! Given that, I decided it probably wasn't any of those three, so I went into it with few expectations but wondering how much SJW crap there actually was.
As a side note, I've been told that this was a joint project between companies in France, Germany, and maybe a couple of other countries (Italy?), so this isn't actually BBC crap of SJW or any other type, though the BBC is broadcasting it.
Okay, this is where the spoilers start.
I just checked out the summary of the novel on Wikipedia so that I can accurately say that the show changed Passepartout, Phileas Fogg's white French valet, to being black, and they eliminated the subplot of Detective Fix chasing Fogg around the world trying to slow him down and apprehend him for a crime he thought he committed in favor of giving Fogg a second supportive companion in the form of Abigail Fortescu. Abigail is his friend Fortescu's daughter and an aspiring journalist, who follows Fogg to report on his journey; for story reasons, she adopts her mother's maiden name, Fix, as her own. So, with two of the main characters changed from white men to a black man and a woman, you can see why people think this is an SJW show.
They also changed Fogg. I don't know first-hand what the original character was like, but I would imagine, as an adventuring character written in the 19th century, he was probably the confident high-class Englishman who charged and met every setback head-on. This Fogg is a sheltered high-class Englishman who never had to fight for anything in his life and, when confronted with anything slightly uncomfortable or challenging, immediately backed down and ran away.
So, we have a timid Englishman, a black man with a mysterious past, and a woman trying to prove herself, traveling around the world through the different parts of the British Empire - a world that Fogg believes is inhabited by ignorant natives being educated by the civilized British. Depending on how it was handled, this could have been a disaster of a show, but it wasn't. It was a fun romp, and yes, it did deal with some difficult issues, but it did it on a personal level. It didn't challenge the British mindset - it challenged the characters to face their assumptions and learn from them.
What I think it's really worth watching for is the development of all three main characters. Phileas is an unapologetic English high-class arse, but he learns a lot from his travels and gains the courage to claim his prize and to be gracious to his adversary, his "friend" Bellamy with whom he'd made the bet to travel the world in 80 days and who tried to make him fail by sending thugs to slow him down or kill him. Passepartout learns to trust his friends and not run at the first sign of danger (or friendship). Abigail loses the naivete of the sheltered rich Englishwoman and starts shedding her assumptions of a kind world she's always had. Mostly, though, the three grow together without becoming the perfect saccharine family: Fogg is still an arse, Passepartout is still shady, Abigail is still optimistic. (Also, the performances are stellar. DT's always awesome, but Passepartout and Abigail (sorry for not going to look up their actors, but I know P is Ibrahim Koma) were also a joy to watch.)
Overall, I really enjoyed the show, but I can't really give it a rave review because, well, the individual episodes didn't sit well with me. Part of the problem was that they were rather predictable. For example, the opening credits display a clock with figures showing all the places they are going to, and one of them was the American Wild West. I immediately thought, "Oh, they're going to encounter racism there, probably a Klansman or three, and Fogg's going to have to decide if he really agrees with them, and will realize that Passepartout's shown him that color doesn't matter." Sure enough, that's what that episode was about. Similarly, the train episode: you meet the Italian man with the son he keeps yelling at - the man hates Fogg, but the son immediately cleaves to him - and it was a flashing sign that something would happen to the son, to get the man to realize he loves him and has been treating him badly. Bonus trope: Fogg figures out how to save the son, and now the man respects him.
I was also put off a bit by how fortuitous or serendipitous things were. The show implies that the travelers only stop in very few places - but they encounter a difficulty in each one. One was an earthquake that just so happened to have broken the railroad bridge the day before; another was that they'd gotten on a train that was sent down a track that had never been completed, so they were forced get off and walk to the nearest town - which happened to be having a wedding which went wrong. And probably the worst offender, deep in Araby, Abigail happens to run into the one English woman for hundreds of miles, and she happens to have been wronged years ago by Abigail's father, who had at one point been a suitor. Yes, that's the nature of the format - there were only eight episodes, so they could only show eight locations and something had to happen in each of them - but for me at least, it required a certain suspension of disbelief. Perhaps if it had been ten episodes so that there could have been two social situations while traveling, that might have felt better.
(It's amazing, by the way, how fast those trains could stop - to avoid going over the bridge, to not go off the unfinished track, to not run over Fogg, who was standing in the middle of the tracks waving it down...)
Another thing that felt completely serendipitous was Fogg's solving the broken bridge problem with two minutes and two small pages of equations in his notebook. Setting aside the fact that the show did not set up the idea that he was a gentleman scientist (and in fact, later on went through great pains to explain that he did nothing with his life except read newspapers at the Reform Club), it's not likely that anyone could have come up with that assessment that quickly and with that little knowledge of the construction of the bridge. (And it's a bit out of character for Fogg, who never had the courage to face any problem, to have stated his confidence in his solution.)
All in all, I enjoyed the show and will definitely be rewatching it when I get a DVD copy. They did a good job of creating interesting characters and having them grow and learn from each other, all within the Jules Verne framework - I'd like to say "reimagining the story with modern ideas" but that's pretentious. I can ignore the quibbles I have with the episodes if I imagine that it's meant to be more Doctor Who-like - and the ending kind of implied that was the direction they were going for the second season, where Fogg, Passepartout, and Fix are going to be Victorian explorers seeing the world. And that just might be a whole lot of fun.
