Time Bandits without dwarf actors? TV remake with Taika Waititi, Lisa Kudrow had a rethink

Apple TV+ adaptation of 1981 film directed by Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam about time-travelling thieves flip-flops on casting dwarf actors

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Cast members of the Apple TV+ series Time Bandits (from left) Tadhg Murphy, Roger Jean Nsengiyumva, Lisa Kudrow, Kal-El Tuck, Kiera Thompson and Rune Temte. Photo: Apple TV+ via AP

Published: 4:15pm, 21 Jul 2024

Adapting a cult-classic film into a television series is a daunting task, but for Lisa Kudrow and her collaborators on Time Bandits, that challenge just meant there was more room for exploration.

“The series version of a film means you’re gonna expand and really go into some more details about that world, and that’s what I was excited about,” Kudrow says. “It was really fun.”

Time Bandits, an Apple TV+ series that begins streaming on July 24, is based on the 1981 film of the same name directed by Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam and co-written by him and frequent collaborator Michael Palin.

Both the film and the series follow a ragtag band of time-travelling thieves, led in the film by David Rappaport as Randall and in the TV series by Kudrow as Penelope, who join forces with their newest recruit – an 11-year-old history buff named Kevin – on a journey through time to save the boy’s parents from evil forces.

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While the series stays loyal to several key details from the source material, Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, who created the series with Iain Morris, said it was important to them that the show did not feel like an imitation of the film.