Time Bandits Review: Apple TV+'s Time Travel Adventure Series Is a Worthy Adaptation of the '80s Film

Not every movie easily lends itself to television adaptations or spin-offs. For every Fargo, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Friday Night Lights there's a Willow or Taken (or, digging deeper into history, Dirty Dancing, Ferris Bueller, Fast Times… the list goes on). Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits, on the other hand, feels like a natural fit. A fantasy hit from 1981, Gilliam's film — co-written with fellow Monty Python member Michael Palin — concerns the adventures of a boy named Kevin who gets swept up in the time traveling misadventures of a group a thieves with a map that allows them to move from one point in history to the next. An episodic film with segments set during ancient Greece, medieval England, the voyage of the Titanic, and other notable moments, it seemingly needs only to be extended to the length of a season to work.

Time Bandits, Apple TV+'s series of the same name, mostly proves that to be true. Adapted by Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, and Iain Morris, who've collaborated with each other in various configurations on projects like Flight of the Conchords, What We Do in the Shadows, and Next Goal Wins, keeps the premise more or less intact. The series' Kevin (Kal-El Tuck), like his cinematic predecessor, is a history nerd with doltish parents who have little use for anything not on the TV screens immediately in front of them. Sure, they'll take him to Woodhenge for his birthday, but that doesn't stop them, or Kevin's younger sister Saffron (Kiera Thompson), from razzing him about it the entire outing.

Then, with little warning, an oddly dressed quintet crashes out of his closet and into his room, pursued by a terrifying giant mask that Kevin will soon learn belongs to the Supreme Being (played, in unmasked form in later episodes, by Waititi). Dragged into their escape via a time portal, Kevin next finds himself aboard a Chinese pirate ship, where he's reluctantly made a part of the gang led by Penelope (Lisa Kudrow), though her refusal to be considered the leader becomes a running gag. It's filled out by Bittelig (Rune Temte), a gentle but powerful giant; Widget (Roger Nsengiyumva), who may or may not understand how the map works; Judy (Charlyne Yi), a self-declared empath; and Alto (Tadhg Murphy), an aspiring actor when he's not attempting to rob the world of its treasures.

7.4

Time Bandits

at Apple TV+

Like

• Fun premise
• Lively performances
• Gentle absurdity
• Colorful recreations of history

Dislike

• It's at its most engaging when it doesn't worry that much about the main plot

The first episode more or less sets the pattern for the series, which finds Kevin and the bandits dropped into points in history as far afield as the fall of Troy and Prohibition-era Harlem, with Kevin serving as guide to his mostly clueless companions. It's a bit like Doctor Who or Quantum Leap (or the long-forgotten Voyagers!), only our heroes tend to create problems rather than solving them. As the season progresses, an overarching plot takes shape, one in which Kevin has to rescue his parents (from a fate that will look familiar to fans of the film) as Saffron follows his path through time and the conflict between the Supreme Being and Pure Evil (Clement, beneath horns) takes shape, and it becomes clear the Supreme Being might not be right all the time, despite His title.

The most striking difference between the series and the film that inspired it is one of tone. Gilliam's film, though kid friendly, had a Python edge to it and a sense of irreverence bordering on nihilism. (Its final scenes helped disabuse a generation of kids of the notion that all endings had to be happy.) A gentler sort of absurdity, one in the same vein as its creators' past work, drives the series. Its characters are more endearing than off-putting, and while Kevin's parents are, again, consumerist zombies, they mean well, and it's understandable why Kevin would (literally) go to Heaven and Hell to save them. It's an unfailingly pleasant show that, between gags, even slips in some educational tidbits here and there. (Did you know the Mongols' catapulting of plague-infested corpses into the city of Caffa during a 14th century siege is considered the first instance of biological warfare?)

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The cast helps, too. Tuck and Thompson play their characters as no-nonsense kids in a nonsense-heavy world, and the bandits make for charmingly eccentric companions. (The shadow hanging over the series' lightness is Yi's accusations of on-set abuse and mid production departure from the series. Their character vanishes after five episodes, and the disappearance, though given an explanation, is both awkward and conspicuous, particularly on the heels of Judy's best episode, one in which she vexes Casanova with her indifference to his charms.) It's a terrific fit for Kudrow, too. Her gift for delivering dialogue in off-kilter rhythms and portraying characters with a misplaced confidence in their authority and understanding of the world fits perfectly into the series. Clement only shows up occasionally, but his inability to refer to the Supreme Being without gagging never grows old.

Time Bandits loses a little steam late in the season as the focus turns to Kevin's quest and away from his trip through time. It's unclear, too, whether some dangling plot threads got lost in the process or will be resumed if the series gets a second season. This first season, however, makes that prospect a welcome one. History offers a seemingly inexhaustible well of material. There are whole millenia out there just waiting for a bunch of misfits to screw them up.

Premieres: First two episodes premiere Wednesday, July 24 on Apple TV+, followed by two new episodes each week
Who's in it: Lisa Kudrow, Kal-El Tuck, Charlyne Yi
Who's behind it: Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, and Iain Morris
For fans of: Family-friendly fantasies, historical silliness
How many episodes we watched: 10 of 10