Time Bandits, review: Horrible Histories meets Bill & Ted in superb family-friendly remake

Knockabout fun is the order of the day in Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s remake of Terry Gilliam’s 1981 sci-fi favourite

Did Apple TV+ really need to remake the much-loved 1981 film Time Bandits as a 10-part TV series? In all truth, probably not. But given that we live in an era where any story with a beginning, middle and end (or even one with a snappy title) is prime IP fodder, it was inevitable that at some point someone would “do” Time Bandits.
The good news is that Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement and Iain Morris have done it very well. It helps that the original set-up was oven ready for big budget, episodic television: the Time Bandits of the title are a motley (meaning useless) crew of thieves and vagabonds who blunder through space and time trying to steal stuff. Led by Lisa Kudrow’s Penelope, they come with all the efficacy and panache that you’d expect from a squad honed in the image of Phoebe from Friends. When a wardrobe-based, Narnia-ish temporal anomaly brings them together with 11-year-old Kevin from Bingley (Kal-El Tuck), the comic capers begin.
It is by now axiomatic that the world is swimming in too much television. Even so, there are still precious few series that you can watch as a family without sending your children rushing to Fortnite’s warm embrace or Nutribulleting your own brain. Time Bandits is one of them. With Waititi and Clement at the helm, it comes with the pedigree of What We Do in the Shadows and Flight of the Conchords, two TV hall of famers. Add in The Inbetweeners’ Iain Morris on script duties and you have enough-but-not-too much of Waititi’s brand of fulsome irony, alongside the chaotic humour that made Terry Gilliam’s original film such a favourite.
Another answer to the question of “Why bother?” would be, “Apple’s billions”. Here, the money has been well spent on the kind of production design that we thought Disney might bring to Doctor Who – now the journey through time and space feels both credible as well as epic. It looks much better than the original. The multiple worlds and the portals between them are grandiose but the humour is homely. It’s a winning combo.
Time Bandits v2 is also blessed with two superb comic leads. Kudrow we know about from Friends, but here she’s more in the mould of her character in the excellent The Comeback – finicky and diffident. Even when the Waititi/Clement humour verges on the over-familiar, Kudrow’s comic timing saves the day. She is a pleasure to watch.
Kal-El Tuck as young Kevin is also tremendous, though in a more thematic role – the wide-eyed kid who turns out to be more grown up than the klutzy adults. (And here Time Bandits also owes much to Waititi’s early film Hunt for the Wilderpeople). Even so, Tuck makes the role his own, as well as rocking a mean pair of aviators throughout.
Overall, as Kevin leads the Bandits through the ultimate battle of good and evil, against a backdrop of the building of Stonehenge, the Trojan wars, the birth of Mayan civilisation and of course Bingley, 50,000BC, Time Bandits is something akin to Horrible Histories meets Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. There’s nothing new here, but it really doesn’t matter. This is a loving – and ultimately loveable – homage.
The first two episodes of Time Bandits are on Apple TV+ now; weekly thereafter