Around the World in 80 Days — a welcome escape from travel bans

As the latest wave of Covid causes chaos and festive travel plans are thwarted, a series about an exceedingly rich Victorian gentleman embarking on an impulsive round-the-world trip could be an unwelcome prospect. But that would be to miss this spry and sumptuous drama about a man who sets out to prove to his haughty, mutton-chopped chums at the Reform Club that the spirit of adventure is alive and well.

This adaptation of Jules Verne’s 1873 novel by Ashley Pharoah (Ashes to Ashes, Life on Mars) stars David Tennant as Phileas Fogg, the British scientist who accepts a £20,000 wager to circumnavigate the globe in record time using any means of transport at his disposal, during which he must see off various attempts to stop him. He is accompanied by a French valet, Passepartout (Ibrahim Koma), who is in a hurry to leave London after a love affair goes awry, and a young journalist, Abigail Fix (a spirited Leonie Benesch), who hopes to defy sexist convention and further her career by reporting on Fogg’s exploits.

The pace is predictably breakneck. In the opening episode alone we travel from London to Dover to Paris, where our trio get embroiled in an assassination attempt on the French president and Fogg is shot at. With the trains out of action and the police on their tail, they beat a retreat in a hot-air balloon that they conveniently find lurking in a Paris courtyard.

This is the kind of drama that cares little for logic and during which it is best not to think about how, say, the three of them don’t emerge from the balloon with frost bite, or how Fogg magically appears in a dinner suit within hours of losing his luggage to a gaggle of street urchins.

A more important question hangs over proceedings: given that Verne’s most popular novel already exists in multiple forms, from feature films and TV series to plays and video games, do we really need another one? The answer is, of course, no. But also: so what? Even with its erratic plotting, Pharoah’s adaptation is a lot of fun and exactly the type of upbeat family fare required to help us through another winter until we can head out and see the world for ourselves once more.

★★★★☆

BBC1 on Boxing Day at 5.50pm and Masterpiece PBS in the US on January 2