Foggy Notion:Around The World In 80 Days.

When Jules Verne wrote Around The World In Eighty Days, back in 1872, it was a different  - and a far more unconnected - world than the one we know now. London, where the story starts, was a city of horse drawn carriages, butlers, frock coats, top hats, broad sheet newspapers, boiled beef, spotted dick, and roly poly puddings.

At least the world of Phileas Fogg (David Tennant) was like that. Fogg's the key protagonist of the latest adaptation of the story, Around The World In 80 Days (BBC1/iPlayer, directed by Steve Barron, Brian Kelly, and Charles Beeson - the last named of whom sadly died before the show was televised last Xmas and New Year), and he's a well meaning man with a keen and inquisitive mind and great diplomatic skills but not one you'd describe as worldly wise.

He's never once set foot abroad so he seems wholly unsuited to the task of circumnavigating the globe in eighty days. But when he proposes to his drinking chums in The Reform Club (members only, no women allowed - naturally) that he believes that not only is the task possible but that he could personally undertake it, a wager is made with fellow Reform Club member Nyle Bellamy (Peter Sullivan).

Overseen by the third member of their armchair hogging triumvirate, Bernard Fortescue (Jason Watkins). With Fogg's usual butler, Grayson (Richard Wilson, now eighty-six himself) seemingly too frail to join the voyage, Fogg enlists the service of Jean Passepartout (Ibrahim Koma), a waiter who pretends to be a valet in order to escape his own circumstances. Something, we soon learn, that is not new to him.

They're joined, if they want to be or not, by Fortescue's daughter Abigail Fix (Leonie Benesch) whose intention, as a journalist, to write of their adventures for The Daily Telegraph. A newspaper, which I believe it still was then, that her father edits.

The three of them will be our near constant companions for the entire journey as they take multiple means of transportation (trains, steamers, horse drawn taxis, ferries, hot air balloons, stagecoaches, and camels) and journey from London to Paris and on to Brindisi, Port Said, India, Hong Kong, the Wild West, New York, Liverpool, and back to London. It starts to get a bit like the lyrics to Frank Ocean's Lost.

It's never in doubt they'll complete the journey (even if sometimes the way surmount some of the obstacles placed in front of them means the viewer needs to rely on a generous dose of suspended disbelief) but what is in doubt is if they'll do the journey in the agreed time. For dramatic reasons, we can easily assume it'll be a close run thing. It's not long before we discover that Bellamy is in serious debt and has employed the services of Thomas Kneedling (Anthony Flanagan) to try and scupper Fogg in his challenge.

It's not the only impediment Fogg, Passepartout, and Fix will meet along the way. They'll run into pirates, armed revolutionaries, bullies, the KKK, and even snakes. Between the three of them, they'll get shot, get stuck in a sandstorm, navigate a collapsing viaduct on a train with a sick child, end up in jail (on more than one occasion), and get so badly drugged one of them ends up holding a conversation with a cow. At times both Fix and Passepartout doubt Fogg's ability to rise to the challenge. Even Fogg is plunged into despair at the seeming impossibility of it all at one point.

Of course, he will bounce back and, of course, it will be a sensational adventure but it will also be a journey of education. En route they'll encounter, or reference, real life historical characters like Adolphe Thiers, Jane Digby, Bass Reeves, Ludwig I of Bavaria, King Otto of Greece, and Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg but they'll also learn more important life lessons too.

Fogg is upended from a world of sticky wickets at The Oval, pints of Old Peculiar, and rousing renditions of The Roast Beef Of Old England and though his unerring belief in the stiff upper lip of the good British chap is sorely tested. he remains a living embodiment of it.

His worldview, and presumably that of Verne, is very much of its time. The revolting French drink pastis, the Italian men chase women (the fact their trains run on time is quite surprising in this context), the Chinese wear coolie hats and pull rickshaws, and Arabs can't be trusted with money. It could be problematic but it's saved by the fact that this is how Fogg sees the world and we're seeing the whole story through the prism of his experience. Later on, when Passepartout experiences explicit, and dangerous, racism - Fogg's privilege blinds him to it.

But when Fogg does see it, he comes out strongly, if somewhat clunkily, against it. Tennant's very good in the role (he usually is, whatever he's in) and Koma and Benesch make for more than able support. There's a chemistry between the three of them that becomes more palpable as the eight episodes play out but I should also mention an astoundingly good supporting cast. Not just Watkins, Sullivan, and Flanagan but great cameo roles from Lindsay Duncan, Gary Beadle, Victoria Smurfit, Masali Baduza, Giovanni Scifoni, Charlie Hamblett, Shivaani Ghai, Loic Djani, Faical Elkihel, and Dolly Wells.

Brilliant though all these actors are, they're eclipsed by some absolutely beautiful imagery - as you may have expected with such an endeavour. Snowcapped mountains, shooting stars, Arabian souks, rows of cypress trees, the gargoyles of Notre Dame, the still half-built Brooklyn Bridge, and, most of all, boats sailing at night. Some even look as they've been painted by Winslow Homer.

It's, quite simply, beautifully shot. A joy to look at, a right old escapade, and a thoroughly enjoyable romp. There are tense moments a-plenty (even though you know the story demands they survive) and a few funny ones (Fogg tries to order a beer in the Muslim Ottoman Empire, Fogg can't piss next to 'another chap') too. If it's quite a loose adaptation of Verne's novel that's probably for the best as I remember reading it and finding it fascinating but cold. 

Here, there is emotion - eventually - when we find out what forces are at play, firstly, behind Passepartout's decision to join Fogg on this epic trip and, finally, when we find out what motivation lurks deepest in the back of Fogg's own mind. A meeting with an old acquaintance in Grand Central Station in New York tells us all we need to know. At a time when most of what's on television is given over to the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the beginning of the reign of King Charles III, Around The World In 80 Days proved a warm and lovely distraction.