New Zealand comedy icons Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi have teamed up with British writer Iain Morris (“The Inbetweeners”) for a TV adaptation of Terry Gilliam’s 1981 cult classic comedy “Time Bandits.”
The Apple TV+ series follows 11-year-old Kevin, who joins a mischievous group of misfit thieves and travels through time, stealing treasures from various historical periods.
“Flight of the Conchords” star Clement was just a child when the original “Time Bandits” was released but it was a film that stuck with him throughout his life. So when he was asked if he wanted to adapt it into a TV series, he jumped at the opportunity.
“I wanted to be that kid. You don’t even have to leave your house but you can travel all throughout time and be back right in your [bedroom].” Clement tells Variety AU/NZ. “That seemed like a perfect fantasy and this was the way to live this fantasy, by getting set designers and 50 builders to make you a castle or a temple.”
The series takes the audience on a journey throughout history, from the Harlem Renaissance to the Trojan War to the Ice Age. It was an exciting challenge for a writer like Clement with a background in sketch comedy as it gave him freedom to explore the intricacies of different time periods.
It also represented a huge task for the set designers and builders as they “had to create a new world every 10 days.” However, Clement said that everyone “relished the opportunity” to do something this ambitious and unique.
The scope of the production gave him a new perspective and added respect for the original film as they attempted to create something timeless with a limited budget.
“It was very impressive what they did in the original film. It was so well planned, as well as being funny and original,” Clement says. “It’s harder to do on TV. You have to have more duration, so getting to all those places would seem impossible. It would be harder to recreate that particular magic that the film has.”
When “Time Bandits” was first announced, Gilliam was originally attached to the project as an executive. While Clement reveals he would have loved to ask the iconic director about the original film, the writers didn’t manage to arrange a meeting with the Python.
And despite “Time Bandits” being an adaptation of Gilliam’s original, Clement admits that they wanted to keep it as fresh and unique as possible and not just “copy the original.”
“It felt like if we imitated him too much that it would just be plagiarism, even though he’s being paid for it,” he adds. “Copying things from the movie would feel like we were just ripping him off so we made our version based on the feeling we had from watching the movie.”
Clement might not have met Gilliam for this series, but he met him once before during a random encounter in London. “I sat next to him once at a movie screening of [Wes Anderson’s] ‘Isle of Dogs’ in London for both humans and dogs. No bullshit, there were about 30 or 40 dogs in the theatre.”
The 1981 “Time Bandits” introduced Clement to Monty Python and a certain type of British comedy that would help influence his comedy style alongside a mixture of ’80s British and American comedies. He remarks that they were tempted to incorporate jokes from Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” and “The Holy Grail” as a homage, but decided not to in the end.
As well as co-writing the series, Clement also stars as Pure Evil – the antagonist who plans to steal a map of various portals from the Time Bandits and take over the world. Clement had an unusual source of inspiration for his portrayal of the character, born out of his experiences of writers’ rooms.
“My feeling of frustration that I have playing Pure Evil is what it’s like running a writers’ room where you’re arguing and people are coming up with ideas that are unusable,” he says. “As a writer, you’re trying to plan what happens in this world. As a villain, you’re trying to plan how to take over the world.”
The scale of the production of “Time Bandits” is a far cry from Clement’s first TV series “Flight of the Conchords.” To this day, the iconic sitcom is HBO’s most cost-effective show because it was made on a shoestring budget while becoming incredibly popular.
With a big budget provided by Apple TV+, Clement describes “Time Bandits” as a “playground” as it gave the writers creative freedom to let their imaginations run wild. Nevertheless, big-budget shows still throw up certain unique challenges.
“Every episode cost more than the whole series of ‘Flight of the Conchords.’ With a low budget, they leave you alone. They don’t care what you do because they’re not giving you much money so they see what you come up with,” he explains.
“When there’s lots of money there’s lots of people piping in and a lot of opinions. It’s hard to get every opinion into a piece in the right way. I’m happy with how the show turned out despite that.”
“Time Bandits” can be streamed now via Apple TV+.