‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ Is a Story About a Repetitive Life, Told Repetitively: TV Review
11.05.2022 - 19:09
/ variety.com
Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticWhen it comes to “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” what’s old is new. Quite literally.Audrey Niffenegger’s novel, published in 2003, captured the imagination of a vast readership with its story of a marriage unmoored by a husband’s tendency to skip through time. The widespread swooning made a film adaptation, released in 2009 and starring Eric Bana as time traveler and Rachel McAdams as wife, a foregone conclusion.
Now, the franchise reappears in our timeline, with Theo James and Rose Leslie taking on the lead roles in an HBO drama series that keeps Niffenegger’s complicated conceit intact.Here, James’ Henry and Leslie’s Clare speak at times directly to camera, documentary-style, about the strangeness of their plight: Henry is unstuck in history, vanishing from linear time to pop up at moments of key importance. This is what lends his romance with Clare its sense of destiny, as, in adulthood, he was transported to meet her as a child. She was seemingly fated to be an important figure in his life.
It’s also what gives the marriage its air of doom. Henry cannot meaningfully be present when he’s always moments from being snatched into the past. And the fact that Clare has met Henry at various ages but never as a senior citizen suggests a premature end lies ahead.
This all made for more story than the feature film could get its arms around; perhaps, then, a six-episode season of television, directed by Emmy-winning “Game of Thrones” helmer David Nutter, could begin to do the job. But the fact of the previous adaptation looms over “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” 2022 edition: This is a series that struggles at times to find a new way into its story. And that story, as before, is so elaborately and
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