The Time is Right For THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE as a Thrilling and Magical Shout-Out to Happy Marriages

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede Steven Moffat has had several professional reasons through the years to think very deeply about time travel. But with his latest series, HBO’s THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE, debuting Sunday, May 15 on Crave, the veteran executive producer and writer was asked if he would ever be personally interested in venturing back and forth in time. “I would not like to go back to any previous era, the dentistry would be appalling, the medical care would be wretched, and we’d still have most of the pandemic to go, so I’m perfectly happy here,” Moffat said during a virtual panel interview. “I’m a happy man. I’m happy right now. If it could just stay now, I would use my time machine to stay now. I like this. This is great right here.” Theo James, who stars in THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE alongside Rose Leslie, was asked the same question. “I would love to – maybe not forever – but I’d love to travel back to a less complicated time in terms of the sheer mass of people on the planet,” James said. “I always think of that stat, that at the end of the Second World War, there were two and a half billion people, or just nearing three billion, on the planet, and now we’re heading to seven billion. Soon, there will be 9, 11, and sometimes I walk down the street, or I’m in a beautiful park, and I think, what would this place be like if there weren’t so many people here, essentially? So maybe I’d go back 50 years, to smell the air. But it probably smelled worse, because there were less catalytic converters.” The thing about the Time Traveler in THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE is that it isn’t up to him when, or if, he travels. As he puts it in the first episode, “it’s not a superpower, it’s a disability. It’s what’s wrong with me.” The six-episode drama, adapted by Moffat (DOCTOR WHO, SHERLOCK) from the novel of the same name by Audrey Niffenegger, follows the intricate, magical, and understandably complicated love story between Clare (Leslie) and Henry (James). There was a 2009 movie version of The Time Traveler’s Wife starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana (available for streaming on STARZ), but Moffat believes TV is the better avenue for this adventure. “The great advantage of a mini-series is we can do the whole story,” he said. “The movie was a quite intelligently abbreviated version, but by abbreviating it you’re missing the detail, and all the complexity, and you make it, in a way, all about the time travel, and not about the love story. In terms of the original book, it’s classic. We do expand on some areas, and we do occasionally move things around a bit, but I love it too much not to remain true to its intent and its heart.  Everyone loves that book, so there’s no messing around with the stuff that really matters. I hope our judgment on what really matters is right.” Moffat added that a big part of the attraction of THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE is that it shines a spotlight on certain elements of long-term relationships that often get forgotten in standard story-telling. “I think what is brilliant about the interaction of time travel and a love story here is it makes the most common phenomenon of a completely happy marriage interesting again,” he explained. “Romance movies end at the altar, or they start with the divorce. We never do the bit where people are perfectly happy with each other for decades, because it seems like an undramatic thing. But by scrambling it all up, and by constantly reminding you that love is inextricably linked to loss – which is a cheery thought for you all – you make this marriage interesting, thrilling, and full of tension and tragedy, as well as joy and happiness.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv