In the latest “Time Bandits” episodes, the titular band shifts from staving off hunger by gnawing sticks to noshing on sandwiches, the latest rage in Georgian England allegedly invented by none other than the Earl of Sandwich.
Long afterward, the series’ boy hero, Kevin Haddock (Kal-El Tuck), is rubbing elbows with the richest man in history, Mansa Musa. Kevin and his titular companions, led by Penelope (Lisa Kudrow), have been feted and hunted, narrowly escaping death many times.
But this series is less about action than the famous friends Kevin, Penelope and the rest make along the way – all historic figures from places and times the show’s co-creators Iain Morris, Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi wish they could visit.
More accurately, Clement told Salon, most were on his 12-year-old’s wish list. “I just asked my son, who is also a history fan — history nerd, you might say – if you could go anywhere, where would you want to go? What would you want to see?”
We have him to thank, then, for the series’ sojourns to the deck of 19th century pirate Zheng Yi Sao’s ship and the Trojan War. Other suggestions came from the historians and writers on the show’s staff, who wrote a Harlem Renaissance stop into their trip as well as this week’s tagalong with Mansa Mua, who was thought to be the richest person in history.
“So he's an obvious target to meet,” Clement said.
Historic accounts are often as full of ridiculousness as wonder. Terry Gilliam capitalized on that idea in his original “Time Bandits,” the 1981 classic Clement, Morris and Waititi expanded on. Given Gilliam’s wildly creative sensibilities, you’d be forgiven for assuming Clement was raised on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” based on the similarities between the Pythons and his absurdist comedy style, epitomized by “Flight of the Conchords” and “What We Do in the Shadows.”
Not so, he said in our Zoom conversation from his home in New Zealand. “I mean, I was only seven, and I knew ‘Fawlty Towers,’ which was on TV at the time,” he said. “I’m from the generation of ‘The Young Ones’ and ‘Black Adder.' That’s what was on when I was growing up.”
Fair enough, although I wonder if Morris, who co-created “The Inbetweeners" and previously worked with Clement (on “Conchords”) and Waititi (with whom he co-wrote the 2023 sports comedy “Next Goal Wins”), wouldn’t argue that proves Clement was touched by the Pythons more than he may suspect.
“When you write a lot of comedy, particularly in Britain, often you get told ‘This is too Pythonesque,’ or ‘This is too surreal or weird,’ or ‘These jokes are too weird,’ this, that and the other, and to try and make it a bit less odd,” Morris observed in a separate Zoom interview.
Adapting “Time Bandits” with Clement and fellow co-creator Taika Waititi allowed him to relax into his natural inclinations as a lifelong “Python” aficionado. “The joy of being able to write something where they're like, ‘Great, this is exactly the kind of oddness we want,’ Taika and Jemaine really pushed that, I think.”
But it also enabled Morris to play with his obsessiveness with history, as seen in Kevin and the gang’s confrontation with the Earl of Sandwich over, of all things, their decision to dine on a purloined pineapple. “A very close friend, Francesca Beauman, wrote a history of the pineapple. Jemaine knows Francesca as well,” he said. “And so, yeah, the Georgian history of the pineapple came from a friend of ours’ book.”
Beauman’s book is called “The Pineapple,” in case you were wondering, which is the series’ strength. “Time Bandits” is that rare show that successfully blends comedy and education so naturally as to make Googling further information on the kings, commanders and criminals Kevin falls in with part of its joy.
The bigger goal is to entertain parents with fond memories of watching Gilliam’s movie when they were children and inspire them to watch the show with their kids.
“I like hearing that families are watching together, which is what we wanted,” Clement said. “And I think when people look for family movies, they often look to the ‘80s because there were so many great family movies coming out then. Now, I feel like there's less that are made for a family viewing, and so that's why we wanted to capture that from that time and from the original movie.”
A few changes were made necessary by our much-changed times. Clement’s Pure Evil, the antagonist sending agents after Kevin, Penelope and their gang, wields less of the slapstick menace than David Warner was afforded in his portrayal 43 years ago. Warner’s demonic character would incinerate his minions with a wave of his hand, whereas Clement’s baddie is a bit more judicious with his violence.
He does make a few folks explode, he assures me, as seen in one of the new episodes when a subordinate questions him. “I am fear given form,” he deadpans. “Never correct me.”
You can and should admire the assortment of costumes Pure Evil is working with, one of the many updates the series enacts thanks to a more generous budget than Gilliam could muster back in the day. Even Apple has its limits, though, as seen in the fact that Clement is playing Pure Evil opposite Waititi’s Supreme Being.
“We couldn't bring the people we wanted to New Zealand for these relatively small parts, you know, so we ended up doing it,” Clement explained. With that savings, he added, they were able to afford better costume designs and practical effects.
Regardless, Apple money buys more than what Gilliam could. The special effects looked much more handmade because the crew had to make do with very little.
But the series' production came with other trade-offs. The movie makes Evil’s goal to take over the world using personal computers, which in 1981, were still a novelty. Clement, choosing his words very carefully, said earlier drafts of their script were more critical of technology. (Reminder: this show is brought to you by the makers of your iPhone.) Eventually its writers shifted Pure Evil’s focus and that of Kevin’s parents to an emphasis on their withered ability to connect with their son’s old-fashioned penchant for reading and learning.
Kevin’s parents also used to be more like Gilliam’s versions, he said, as in “just horrible. But we were happy to change that because, in this version, Kevin and his sister Saffron (Kiera Thompson) are saving their parents, so we had to make them lovable enough to save.”
Another change from the original was less welcome when the series was first announced: Morris, Clement and Waititi chose to cast average-sized actors Rune Temte, Tadhg Murphy, Roger Jean Nsengiyumva and Charlyne Yi alongside Kudrow instead of little people, who played the original bandits.
Both insist there were always going to be characters played by little people in the series. The issue was to make sure they weren’t “backward depictions." Those quotes are intentional — Peter Dinklage said that in response to Disney’s announced live-action version of “Snow White,” which went public around the same time that “Time Bandits” was beginning to come together.
“We talked a lot about that, actually, and we read articles and stuff about what the set was like on the original ‘Time Bandits,’” Morris said. “What we didn't want to have that sense of like, ‘Oh, they're doing it again.”
Clement added that one of the actors originally hired was a little person, but they wanted to do a play staged in England and didn't want to be in New Zealand for the full production time. Their part went to another cast member. “But we'd always intended it to be a mix,” he said.
Hence, the inclusion of a pair of inspectors working for the Supreme Being played by a pair of actors with dwarfism, whose secondary roles are set to expand in the second season . . . which has yet to be picked up.
This demonstrates a common problem with being too careful in remaking an old movie for modern audiences: overcorrection by omission.
Clement and Morris acknowledged the complaints. Other feedback has been inspiring, though. “'Time Bandits,'” Morris said somewhat jokingly, “is the first thing that my son's ever been able to watch that I've done because it's not just constant filth, which is what I normally portray.”
“The people that love ‘Time Bandits’ or know ‘Time Bandits’ really love it, but I think a lot of people didn't really know it or love it,” he added. “I’ve enjoyed playing with it, and I enjoyed taking the best from the original and being inspired by people who have been an inspiration all my life. How lucky to get a chance to use the word ‘Pythonesque,’ to use ideas that Terry Gilliam had and sort of play with them. And again, it's a big responsibility.”
Clement agreed, citing the difference between Tuck’s version of Kevin as the movie’s hero as the main example of their departure. But I think it has generally the same theme that the thing you're good at will find its place one day, or you will find your place for it if you keep trying.”
New episodes of “Time Bandits” stream Wednesdays on Apple TV+.
