TV Critic Zenna Hussain reviews the new small-screen adaptation of The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Time Traveller’s Wife novel debuted in 2003 and quickly became a best-seller, generating a mediocre film adaptation in 2009 and now an HBO series premiering on May 15th, 2022. Over six hour-long episodes, the series brilliantly mixes themes of unending love, sacrifice, marriage, and survival while defying defined genres of science fiction, romance, and drama.
The Time Traveller’s Wife, adapted by Steven Moffatt of Doctor Who and Sherlock fame, chronicles the convoluted, perplexing, magical, and out-of-order love tale of Clare Abshire (Rose Leslie, well known for her role in HBO’s Game of Thrones) and Henry DeTamble (Theo James) and a marriage of three: Clare, Henry, and time travel.
The weekly episodes have gotten darker and darker, with the first depicting the first encounter of six-year-old Clare and 36-year-old time traveller Henry, and fourteen years later the second first encounter of 20-year-old Clare and 28-year-old Henry, when she wanders into the library where Henry works, claiming to be his future wife. Later episodes centre on Clare’s efforts to transform the selfish, belligerent younger Henry into the guy she grew up adoring, as we witness scenes from Clare’s upbringing and how their lives have intermingled.
Perhaps The Time Traveller’s Wife’s biggest flaw is that it cannot transcend the implications of its source material. The Time Traveller’s Wife is a spellbinding, self-aware series, with nasty overtones, since Henry has actually witnessed Clare grow up, with a tongue-in-cheek joke regarding the grooming element. Perhaps this might be funnier if this wasn’t the second adaptation glorifying this book. As good as the acting between the older protagonists is, particularly Rose Leslie, the acting between the younger Clare (Everleigh McDonell and Caitlin Shorey) and Henry feels odd and slimy, leading to an emotional detachment from the plot.
It cannot transcend the implications of its source material
Rotten Tomatoes offers The Time Traveller’s Wife a 37 percent approval rating, while Metacritic gives the series a 45 out of 100, indicating mixed or mediocre reviews. The overall view appears to be that The Time Traveller’s Wife lacks a storyline, which benefits character development. A tight concentration on only two characters and the poor script lets down two acclaimed actors who have solid if not mind-blowing chemistry. As a magical realism examination of the painfully literal allegory that love transcends time, the series sometimes takes itself a bit too seriously.
The series sometimes takes itself a bit too seriously
Clare’s passivity helps with this, as she waits for Henry and is degraded to merely the wife in the name of the series. Even Moffat’s attempts to excuse the twisted love story avoid the grooming part in a manner that the series does not, since Clare clearly admits to shaping herself around what he wanted her to be. It is purposefully unpleasant, more of an inquiry into a relationship with a lack of agency on both sides, as Clare bursts into Henry’s library with little-to-no explanation, and Henry becomes aware of the hazards of rewriting history, while Clare has been raised, wholly steered by Henry. The sitcom romanticises this with one of the series’ many cliched sayings, ‘When it comes to falling in love, nobody has any agency. That’s why they call it ‘falling.’
It is purposefully unpleasant
Even the equalising component of Clare influencing Henry’s life feels skewed, and relates to Moffat’s failure to write female characters successfully, since the onus is on Clare to make Henry a nice guy, a painfully ubiquitous cliche in current media.
The Time Traveller’s Wife isn’t without some redeeming qualities: the performances are passionate, there are countless twists and turns, and it stays true to the original material. The usage of prosthetics and make-up for ageing is so awful that it’s hilarious, with Theo James given a greyish hue when older and Rose Leslie maybe not capturing 16 years old as well as she does 28.
In a nutshell, The Time Traveller’s Wife is edgy. Fans of the novel will like the series as a multi-genre, gothic, self-conscious (though bordering on excessiveness) love story, but I would suggest caution if you are easily upset.
Rating: 2.5/5
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