David Tennant’s AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS Miniseries Trailer

David Tennant is beginning an epic adventure in the first trailer for the PBS Masterpiece eight-part miniseries adaptation of Jules Verne’s Around The World in 80s Days.

Tennant is playing the role of adventurer Phileas Fogg, who takes on the challenge of traveling around the world in eighty days and he makes a bet that he will actually be able to complete this amazing feat. Joining Tennant on his journey are Ibrahim Koma (OSS 177) as Fogg’s lively valet, Passepartout, and Leonie Benesch (The Crown) as a determined journalist, Abigail ‘Fix’ Fortescue.

This version of Around The World In 80 Days was adapted by a team of writers led by Ashley Pharoah and Caleb Ranson (Child Of Mine). Steve Barron (The Durrells) directs with Brian Kelly (Downton Abbey) and the late Charles Beeson (The Mentalist).

Pharoah spoke about their vision for the series, saying, “We wanted Fogg, yes to be a preposterously upper-middle-class over-educated Englishman, but I wanted to give him a sort of childlike sense of wonder because he’s never traveled, he’s never left London or his club. As soon as I hit on that, I thought it’s a love letter to the world if that isn’t a bit pretentious. He goes to Paris and India and Hong Kong and Yemen and he’s so excited to see a camel, the different colors and cultures. It felt like resetting our relationship with traveling and seeing the world like that.”

When talking about casting Tennet in the lead role, Simon Crawford Collins, who runs Slim Film + Television, said, “We wanted somebody who could believably do the action-adventure, could play the stiff-upper-lip Englishman, but at the same time you never fall out of love with him and you really want to get under the veneer of that and go, ‘Wow, this is actually a complex man.’ David manages that so brilliantly.”

The series also stars Jason Watkins (Des) and Peter Sullivan (Poldark). Guest actors include Lindsay Duncan (A Discovery Of Witches), Dolly Wells (Dracula), Richard Wilson (Merlin), Faical Elkihel (The Spy), Anthony Flanagan (The Terror), Gary Beadle (Patrick Melrose), and Giovanni Scifoni (DOC – Nelle Tue Mani).

There is no release date of the mini-series right now.