Time Bandits (2024)

Streaming on: Apple TV+

Episodes viewed: 10 of 10

On paper, it looks like the perfect comedy storm: a cult-classic post-Monty Python adventure from Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin, adapted and updated by the dudes behind What We Do In The Shadows and The Inbetweeners. But, for all its pedigree and Apple-funded VFX budget, this 21st-century Time Bandits doesn’t deliver the swag.

The main culprits are the titular gang. Portrayed in the original by dwarf performers including David Rappaport, Kenny Baker and Jack Purvis, the Bandits were an engagingly energetic crew, whose fractious antics powered much of the action-comedy (when the big-star cameos weren’t happening) — as loveable as they were amoral. Here, the noticeably ganglier likes of Lisa Kudrow, Roger Jean Nsengiyumva and Charlyne Yi (who clumsily vanishes about halfway through the story, due to Yi’s much-publicised back injury) fail to measure up.

This is mostly down to the new troupe’s oddly low-energy shtick, featuring muted Bandit banter that’s defined by shrugs, muttering and awkward body language. There is barely a fizzle of chemistry between them — or even with the fresh incarnation of nerdy, lonely kid Kevin (newcomer Kal-El Tuck).

The extended running time doesn’t do the concept any favours, either. Time Bandits ’81 was a brisk romp through familiar history (Napoleon! Robin Hood! The Titanic!), blissfully unconcerned by the mechanisms of temporal exploration. Time Bandits ’24 becomes needlessly tangled up in timey-wimey business, even unwisely riffing on Back To The Future in one late episode, as Kevin and his spiky sister Saffron (Kiera Thompson) encounter their dullard parents as kids in the “black-and-white times” of 1996.

In its favour, however, the remake does broaden its historical horizons, worrying less about famous faces (no-one on the level of John Cleese or Sean Connery here; the biggest stars are Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement themselves) than time-travelling beyond Europe’s borders. So we pleasingly get to visit Mayan Mexico, 1920s Harlem and the Hajj of Mansa Musa.

There are a few good jokes that arise from the show’s comedy-sketch approach, such as an aggro Neanderthal chief who keeps thinking he’s being “mugged off”, but little that tickles more than anything we saw in Horrible Histories. Or, indeed, Gilliam and Palin’s original. Clement, Waititi and Iain Morris’ affection for their source material is apparent throughout, with some lines and shots directly lifted, not to mention its strong seam of dark humour. But even here it ultimately misfires, substituting the film’s jaw-dropper of an ending for a clumsy cliff-hanger that almost dismissively promises a second season. Which, like these new Bandits themselves, hardly musters much enthusiasm.