![]() Miss Fix speculates that the reunion of Fogg and Estella may have been destined all along. He earnestly requests they leave without him if he doesn’t return in time.Īs Phileas runs off to face his past, Abigail and Passepartout discuss the motivations and character of their head honcho. With little more than an hour until departure, Fogg tells Abigail and Passepartout that he is going ashore. He scans the crowd as the heroes are encouraged to make haste to board the Henrietta, a grand ship that will transport them back home.ĭespite being close enough to taste their victory, Phileas is clearly distracted. Phileas is informed that practically the whole city knows he’s coming through this train station today. Our trio is swarmed like the Victorian celebrities they are, and Abigail confidently steps forward as the group’s spokesperson. We join the action right where we left off last week– Fogg in NYC faced with the actual clock depicted in that postcard that’s been mocking him since he left London. You may recall last week our intrepid adventurers were speeding across the American West in the company of a fugitive Confederate soldier and his captor, Bass Reeves. Now’s it’s Day 70 and the finish line is within sight. ET on PBS.It’s finally here! Our eventful journey around the globe is drawing to a close in the season finale of Around the World in 80 Days, and it’s a nail-biter for sure. “Around the World in Eighty Days” premieres January 2 at 8 p.m. Granted, eight hours of “Eighty Days” is a bit too much, but ultimately the series not only answers the “why” of doing a TV version but cleverly plants seeds for another season, as improbable as that sounds given the premise.Īll in all, not a bad day’s (or 80 days) work. “You’ve undertaken this great journey and you don’t even know why,” Fogg is told by one of the people he encounters, an observation that eventually leads to some uncomfortable soul-searching about his life and motives. That’s thanks in large part to Tennant, a versatile actor whose busy TV schedule has cast him as everything from a demon ( “Good Omens”) to Doctor Who. The individual episodes have an anthological quality, from encounters in Paris, Italy and India to the American West following the Civil War, teasing out the daring escapes while confronting issues like race and colonialism.ĭeveloped by Ashley Pharoah (“Life on Mars”), this international co-production manages to bring a revised spin to Fogg’s role as a bored rich guy, embellish Passepartout into much more than a humble servant and still make the former a sympathetic figure. The greater latitude and time enhances the travel aspects (after movie versions, featuring David Niven and Jackie Chan, in 19, respectively), while introducing more detailed backgrounds and relationships among the central trio fleshes out the characters. His not-really-a-valet French aide Passepartout (Ibrahim Koma), who, in need of a job, lies to secure the gig and an ambitious young journalist, Abigail Fortescue (Leonie Benesch), who are both generally more resourceful than the starched English gentleman they’re accompanying. Where this “Eighty Days” stands out, however, is in Fogg’s companions. Naturally there’s a ticking clock (and a terrific score approximating that by Hans Zimmer and Christian Lundberg) as Fogg undertakes his global trek in the 1870s, in an impulsive response to a challenge from Bellamy (Peter Sullivan), an oily member of Fogg’s snooty club secretly in desperate need of winning their high-stakes wager. David Tennant plays the unlikely adventurer Phileas Fogg, in a slick retelling that significantly updates and expands the story. What seems like a not-necessary idea actually turns into a pretty good one with “Around the World in Eighty Days,” adapting Jules Verne’s novel into an eight-episode Masterpiece series, one already renewed for another voyage.
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