Count me among the legion of skeptics who guffawed at the idea of Kiwi cut-ups Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi — with Brit “Inbetweeners” writer Iain Morris — making a TV series based on Terry Gilliam’s post-Python classic film “Time Bandits.”
They might borrow the ingenious 1981 concept — a child drawn through time portals, accompanying mischievous thieves who use a four dimensional map of time which they stole from The Supreme Being to rob famous treasures of history, looting Napoleon, Robin Hood and King Agamemnon and evading the Supreme Being and his counterpart, Evil Genius, who want that map.
They might even mimic the Pythonesque whimsy and way with a droll line.
But we’ve already had an attempt in that direction, a “Bandits” in everything but name ripoff titled “Voyagers!” back in the ’80s, which grabbed hold of the fooling-kids-into-learning-history hook half-hidden in “Bandits'” Biblical allegory/fantasy mashup.
Even with the “Lord of the Rings” artists at WETA doing effects, the glories of New Zealand locations and the best character actors Australia and New Zealand have to offer, how could a new “version” match the chaos, the manic energy, the baroque, muddy and mud-stained Gilliam eye for the primitive periods they’d be perusing?
The answer is, of course they couldn’t.
But what the creative trio adapting this came up with is a more history-centric riff on the plot, with dialogue very much in that wry, droll Python/Douglas Adams (“Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”) style, and a tone set by the inimitable, halting, annoyed line readings of star bandit Lisa Kudrow.
The biggest names in the supporting cast are Clement, as the Satanic Evil One, here named “His Wrongness,” Waititi as the exasperated/twitterpated giant Oz-masked Supreme Being, hulking Brit Viking-for-hire Rune Temte of TV’s “The Last Kingdom” and “The Swarm,” and perpetually miscast and perrenially in over her head comic Charlene Yi.
Yi was kind of a yardstick for me in this series. I typically cringe at their (Yi’s pronoun) performances. But given a role as a ditzy, perhaps-competent “empath” among the bandits, their best part in ages in that Yi is absolutely perfect for it, Yi is an asset here and one of the reasons this big budget kids’ entertainment comes off.
First Yi performance in a decade or more that I’ve liked, and Yi is claiming abuse while making the show, not the first time Yi has lashed out in that direction.
But if you’re not remaking the project with rough and tumble and quarrelsome dwarves who made the first film so amusingly memorable, you could do worse than this crew.
The story — wee mop-topped British history nerd Kevin (Kal-El Tuck) is an eleven year-old who insists his family visit “Woodhenge” for his birthday and can’t fit in at school or at home because of his obsessive reading, painting historic models and sleeping in pyjamas styled to look like a Medieval knight’s surcoat.
Yeah, I had to look up what that was called. Kevin probably wouldn’t need to.
His parents can’t make him play video games or get interested in his cell phone, and his younger sister (Kiera Thompson) wants little to do with him.
So when a portal opens in his closet, dropping him into a Viking battle, and when one of those Vikings (Temte) follows him home, leading to other “bandits” invading Kevin’s bedroom, he may be rattled, but he’s intrigued.
Getting swept along with “not the leader, but the one in charge” Penelope (Kudrow), the hulking Bittelig with “the strength of SEVEN men” (Temte), map-wizard Widget (Roger Jean Nsengiyumva), “actor” impersonator Alto (Tadhg Murphy) and smart-enough-to-lead-but-a-joke-as-an-empath Judy (Yi) isn’t the worst thing that could happen.
Well, maybe it is. They’re tumbling through time, from prehistoric eras to Mayan Mexico, medieval Europe, Ice Age Britain and the like with big plans for thievery, and general incompetence about who and what they’re robbing.
“They’re NEANDERTHALS!”
“Pretty mean thing to say about your parents!”
They’d like to grab “the most famous horse in history.” But nobody’s done their homework of how big The Trojan Horse is.
“What a waste of time…travel.”
Inept but confident Penelope is always having to wing-it when it comes to robberies — an avocado from the Mayans, a vase here, there and everywhere.
“OK, scatter. Steal for five minutes. Meet back at the fountain.
Kevin, whose name Penelope is loathe to get right, is always figuring out where they are by “the books” he’s read, and scolding them for their livelihood.
“Stealing from history is wrong.”
They find themselves dodging dinosaurs or among the Maya, expecting the grisliest end via “human sacrifice,” mixing it up with Bumpy Johnson’s Jazz Age African American gangsters in 1929 Harlem and accused of witchcraft in the Middle Ages, trying to free the peasants and soldier classes from the Sheriff of You-Know-Where.
“This is going to be a lovely fire, and then it’s going to be spoilt by people yelling ‘Oh help, help HELP! I’m on fire!‘”
The direction of the episodes is by and large, TV comedy perfunctory. There are striking images and vivid period recreations, but the framing of shots and the editing is flat when it should be pulling the viewer into the screen and pushing the story forward at something closer to a breathless clip. Comedy is a close-up medium of quick cuts, and that rule isn’t so much ignored as barely acknowledged.
Mark Mothersbaugh (“The LEGO Movie”) did the music, which is fine, but could have used a little lift for the closing credits.
I like the writing in pretty much every episode I watched (about half the series), and the performances are never less than adequate, even if the supporting cast is so overrun with Aussie soap stars as to underwhelm in many a promising historical part.
Kevin’s dad’s “What good is knowing history to anyone?” is proven wrong, time and again, as Kevin seems clairvoyant to the bandits and the simple happy natives wherever they go. But Dad’s dump on Stonehenge as “just a bunch of rocks” made into a tourist attraction could be borne out by visiting the Druids building it.
Stone pillars are nice, but what use are they if you forget the Iron Age “Gift Shop?”
And just when you think the show will be another “boys’ adventure,” sister Saffron sets out in search of her parents and sibling through that very same bedroom closet portal.
“Time Bandits” may not be everything the film it is based on was. But it scores points every time the mythic Cassandra (Zoe Ventoura) warns a Trojan who won’t listen, a Mayan empress (Génesis Mancheren Ab’äj) corrects “Wikipedia,” every time a famed Chinese pirate queen (Katlyn Wong) has her instincts confirmed by a child-interloper who’s read “the book” on her exploits.
Because it’s darned smart entertainment for kids, and parents who appreciate a bit of Kiwi wit with their history.
Rating: TV-PG, comic violence, mild profanity
Cast: Kal-El Tuck, Lisa Kudrow, Charlene Yi, Rune Temte, Roger Jean Nsengiyumva,
Tadhg Murphy, Kiera Thompson, Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement
Credits: Created by Jemaine Clement, Iain Morris and Taika Waititi, based on the Terry Gilliam film and characters created by Gilliam and Michael Palin. An Apple TV+ release.
Running time: 10 episodes @ :32-42 minutes each
