We loved the novel, but this TV version is just creepy
Aman in his 40s forms a secret relationship with a six-year-old girl he intends to marry. The first time they meet, he’s hiding naked in a bush. This may sound like the opening to an episode of 24 Hours in Police Custody. But in The Time Traveler’s Wife (Sky Atlantic), it’s the basis of a cute romcom.
Did we not notice how iffy this was when Audrey Niffenegger’s novel came out in 2003, and became a runaway bestseller? Perhaps it didn’t read so weirdly. But on screen, in a production that won’t let 10 minutes pass by without yet another shot of Henry’s buttocks, it feels very wrong.
Fortysomething Henry was visiting young Clare from the future, in the knowledge that one day they would be husband and wife. Henry has a genetic condition which means that he pings through the space-time continuum without warning. For no discernible reason, this involves him losing all of his clothes. Steven Moffat, the exDoctor Who showrunner who adapted this, inserts the word “naked” into the script so often that it starts to feel creepy.
He also knows that the age gap aspect is uncomfortable, because he attempts a joke about it. Six-year-old Clare is brushing the hair on her toy pony. “I’m grooming her,” she explains. “OK, moving on,” says James hurriedly. Later, adult Clare says that it was unbearable to receive visits from “perfect gentleman” Henry through her “very horny adolescence”; when they finally have a sexual encounter (she’s 28 by now), she strips down to her bra and asks: “Haven’t I grown?” Eww.
The leads are two Brits playing Americans: Theo James (Sanditon) and Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones). James’s job is to look good naked, and not much else. Leslie plays one of those terrible, sassy-but-soft-hearted romcom heroines. It plays out like a passable Channel 5 daytime film, not a supposedly prestige series from HBO. The adaptation is so lazy that episodes begin with the lead characters reading lines straight into the camera, rather than anyone making the effort to work them into the script.
The hair and make-up people have solved the problem of how to show us the difference between younger and older Henry: for the former they give James some bad hair, and for the latter they paint him an odd grey colour, as if being mid-40s is a heartbeat away from the grave. But the styling is the least of this show’s problems.
It has always been obvious that there is something driving Joe Wicks. Not just the ambition common to successful people, but something more complicated. In Joe Wicks: Facing My Childhood (BBC One), we learned that he can spend up to eight hours a day – “benders, proper marathons” – sending video messages and voice notes to fans who have contacted him, many of whom get in touch to share their personal problems.
Wicks became “the nation’s PE teacher” when he began daily Youtube workout sessions for families during the first lockdown. It was a great thing to do, but he admitted here that he felt “really low” when it ended. “I’m happiest when I’m helping people, on a small scale or a global scale,” he explained. After 18 weeks of PE with Joe he was exhausted, yet “a few weeks later I started to think, ‘I’m not valuable any more. I’m not useful. People don’t need me any more.’”
As the programme title suggested, Wicks had a difficult childhood which has shaped the person he is today. His father was a heroin addict, who would clean up only to relapse year after year. His mother suffered from mental health issues, including obsessive compulsive disorder. “I spent my childhood nervous and worried about things, and wanting to always make people around me happy. And I’m doing exactly the same now,” he said. Wicks came across as a lovely guy, but a vulnerable one.
Programmes in which celebrities explore their personal issues and confront their childhood are appearing more frequently. This one had something in common with Gemma Collins’s recent documentary for Channel 4, discussing her self-harm. It is public service broadcasting, because many people at home will recognise something of their own situation, and perhaps be encouraged to seek help or change their behaviour.
According to the programme, three million children in Britain have a parent with a mental health condition – equivalent to six pupils in every class. Wicks’s message was that adults should try to be open with their children. Of course, this is easier said than done; Wicks has a good relationship with both parents but only now is he discussing his childhood with them, at a distance of many years.
The Time Traveler’s Wife ★★ Joe Wicks: Facing My Childhood ★★★★