
He's the worst man in the world to go around the world. Why did you create this new Fogg, who is rather meek and besieged with doubt? He's incredibly confident, annoyingly so. The Phileas Fogg seen in Verne's novel is a stickler for precision, timetables and predictability. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. So yeah, I didn't mean for it to be quite that relevant."Ĭheck out the rest of the interview with Pharoah, who discusses Tennant's version of Fogg, setting episodes on a deserted island and in the Old West, and where the show can go in season 2. "And then of course, COVID came and none of us could travel for two years anyway. It just seemed a really, ridiculously good thing to do that I got quite excited by that.

I thought, here's an opportunity to tell a story, a family story just to show other cultures and just embrace that world of color, other people's cuisine and languages. "At the time in the UK, we were going through a very bitter and nasty, divisive Brexit debate, and everything was a bit gray and closed down. "When they approached me first I thought, 'Does the world really need another Phileas Fogg?'" said Pharoah. The time period and general premise is the same, but Fogg's adventures and personality are less problematic than they were in the 19th century. But Jules Verne did so I just put that in there."Īlthough that ending is lifted straight from Verne, the rest of "Around the World" has updated and veered from the source material. "A lot of people haven't read that book, so I'm sure a lot of people didn't see that coming. I actually just extracted that speech from Jules Verne because if I were actually honest, I still couldn't explain to you quite how that works where they're a day ahead.
#Around the world in 80 days david tennant series
"We always wanted that fantastic twist," series co-creator and writer Ashley Pharoah tells Salon in a Zoom interview. RELATED: In PBS's playful "Around the World in 80 Days," David Tennant channels Jules Verne's liberated spirit The friends literally run to the Reform Club and win the bet in the knick of time. Fogg's elderly valet Grayson (Richard Wilson) explains that by moving eastward through all the time zones in the prescribed period means the travelers think they're on Day 81, but they're actually a day behind.
#Around the world in 80 days david tennant tv
In the TV series, Fogg and his two traveling companions – valet Passepartout (Ibrahim Koma) and reporter Abigail "Fix" (Leonie Benesche) – make it back to England with plenty of time to win the wager of circumnavigating the globe in 80 days using modern transportation technology.īut just when they catch a whiff of victory, Fogg is detained on an arrest warrant, which should've been canceled after he was exonerated. It turns out that PBS' adaptation of the classic Jules Verne novel – despite many updates to the story – couldn't resist keeping the original twist ending the French author wrote in 1873.


Phileas Fogg, played by David Tennant, utters these words in disbelief but also in celebration over a snifter of brandy in the finale of "Around the World in 80 Days."

"I can't believe I mislaid an entire day!" The following contains spoilers from the final season 1 episode of PBS's "Around the World in 80 Days." If you haven't seen it yet, you can check out Salon's review.
