Unbelievable Historical Adventure in Reimagined ‘Time Bandits’ Will Blow Your Mind!

“Time Bandits,” an upcoming series on Apple TV+, is a delightful adaptation of Terry Gilliam’s incredible 1981 comedic fantasy adventure. The show, developed by Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, and Iain Morris, is engaging, amusing, and entertaining, stretching the original film’s concepts into a TV series without losing its essence.

However, it’s advisable to separate the TV series from the original film, or at least not worry about the differences. There are some direct references and similar humor, but the movie’s unflinching, violent, and grotesque nature makes it unique. In contrast, the series is more emotional, less violent, and only grotesque when depicting actual monsters. Notably, the little people who played the bandits in the movie, led by the renowned David Rappaport and including Kenny Baker, the man inside R2-D2, are replaced by full-sized actors in the series. (There are little people in other roles, seemingly being set up for a storyline in the second season.)

The main character is again a young English boy named Kevin (Kal-El Tuck), who unknowingly has a room that serves as a gateway through time and space. (The series implies that both Kevin and his room are uniquely significant.) Kevin is an enthusiastic geek who loves to share historical facts with his screen-obsessed parents, who find him dull; his sister, Saffron (Kiera Thompson), a new addition, sees him as laughable, pitiful, and slightly annoying, as siblings often do. She becomes vital in later episodes.

One night, a wardrobe in Kevin’s room starts to shake and emit light. When he opens the door, he finds himself on a distant beach, in a different era, where a Viking is being pursued by Saxons. It’s less dramatic than the knight bursting into his bedroom in the film, but it’s still quite a shock. Nevertheless, Kevin seizes the chance to ask the fleeing man why the Vikings suddenly abandoned their violent ways and took up farming.

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The next night, the self-proclaimed Time Bandits sneak into his room. They’re fleeing the Supreme Being, whose cosmic map they’ve stolen to pull off heists and escape to various time periods. (They’re not very good at it.) Each bandit has a distinct personality and role in the team, similar to Doc Savage’s crew or the Impossible Mission Force.

Penelope (Lisa Kudrow, in full Kudrow form) views the group as a collective, with herself as the leader. She often switches between “I” and “we” when talking about their minor accomplishments, which are usually quite minor. She’s also nursing a broken heart. There’s a recurring joke about her frequently forgetting Kevin’s name, which remains amusing despite its repetition.

Penelope introduces Bittelig (Rune Temte) to Kevin as someone who “has the strength of seven average men” and “a sensitive side.” Judy (Charlyne Yi), “the master psychologist,” often states the obvious or gets it wrong; Alto (Tadhg Murphy), a dramatic actor, is their master of disguise; and map-reader Widgit (Roger Jean Nsengiyumva) is the occasionally accurate navigator. Their distinct personalities make them less believable as anonymous low-level employees of the Supreme Being, but it’s not something I thought much about until I wrote this sentence.

In the 10-episode series, Kevin gets caught up in their escapades as they try to evade the Supreme Being, who first appears as a massive three-faced head but is later revealed to be Waititi. Co-creator Clement plays Pure Evil, who also wants the map, and sends a demonic agent (Rachel House) to retrieve it. Both Good and Bad end up causing problems.

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“Time Bandits,” the film, co-written by Gilliam and Michael Palin, and featuring Palin as a clumsy fool throughout history and John Cleese as an upper-class Robin Hood, was very much a product of the Python group. (Gilliam, the group’s American member, created their animations.) Structurally, it’s a sketch show with a framing narrative, moving from the Napoleonic Wars to Sherwood Forest to ancient Greece to the Titanic and so on; its humor is similar to “Holy Grail” and “Life of Brian,” combining historical and mythical scenarios with contemporary attitudes, problems, and lingo. The “Blackadder” series by Rowan Atkinson, as well as the recently cancelled pirate comedy “Our Flag Means Death,” where Waititi was executive producer, director, and co-star, share similar elements.

The TV series follows a similar pattern. It’s highly episodic, with even episodes within episodes. In the first 46 minutes alone, we travel to an 18th-century sea battle in Macao, the construction of Stonehenge — “It’s very much a venue for hire, innit, you know, you got your banquets, your weddings, your sacrifices,” Kevin is informed — and ancient Troy, where the bandits plan to steal a famous wooden horse that surprises them with its size.

Future adventures will bring them to Prohibition-era New York, the Maya empire, the African desert, the Ice Age, and Georgian England. There is tension due to the thefts—Kevin disapproves, especially of “stealing from history”—the pursuers, and the unpredictable settings, although Kevin conveniently knows a lot about wherever they end up.

Yi’s departure halfway through the production due to accusations of sexual harassment against an unidentified actor—a claim that the production office found to be unfounded—is handled clumsily, though it’s unclear if there was a better way to handle it. Despite necessitating significant script changes, their absence doesn’t impact the overall story.

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There’s a bigger story at play here. Gilliam’s film had a harsh simplicity that worked perfectly over two hours. But this series is designed to last longer, and while there’s enough variety to keep interest from episode to episode, the additional length seems to necessitate something more. We get motivations, explanations, and emotions. Towards the season’s end, meaningful speeches start to appear; they can seem a bit blatant and contrived. But it doesn’t take long for the humor to take center stage again.

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