{"id":65590,"date":"2025-02-08T22:23:33","date_gmt":"2025-02-08T22:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/?p=65590"},"modified":"2025-02-17T17:12:17","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T17:12:17","slug":"return-to-the-secret-adventures-of-jules-verne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/tentaclii\/index.php\/2025\/02\/08\/return-to-the-secret-adventures-of-jules-verne\/","title":{"rendered":"Return to ‘The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gosh, has it been five years? How time flies. I’ve at last<\/em> got around to fully working through the imaginative pulpy steampunk series The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne<\/em> (SAoJV) (2000). It’s long, at 22 x 45-minute episodes. While an episode often feels longer than it is (briskly edited, sharply written), like most long TV series it’s patchy and padded when you take it on an episode-by-episode basis. If one wanted just enough for two evenings entertainment, I’d suggest the following view-list and viewing order… <\/p>\n

1. “In The Beginning” (Introductions, Phileas Fogg backstory, Queen Victoria)<\/p>\n

2. “Queen Victoria And The Giant Mole” (Verne’s machine stolen)<\/p>\n

13. “The Golem” (Golem, murders in Paris)<\/p>\n

3. “Rockets Of The Dead” (Transylvania)<\/p>\n

14. “Crusader In The Crypt” (England, Phileas Fogg backstory completed)<\/p>\n

11. “Black Glove Of Melchizedek” (Ancient occult glove, Fogg’s other brother)<\/p>\n

12. “Dust To Dust” (Egyptian mummy)<\/p>\n

20. “Secret of the Realm” (Sargasso Sea, Grail, Queen Victoria)<\/p>\n

This omits the ‘mind-control, make the characters act out of character’, ‘time-travel’, ‘palace intrigue’ and ‘visit America’ episodes, to focus just on the better steampunk \/ supernatural episodes. The picked episodes are self-contained, though there are overlapping elements such as Queen Victoria, Count Gregory and the League of Darkness, the head of the Secret Service, and Fogg’s backstory (which you’ll likely lose track of, if you watch all 22 episodes in order). <\/p>\n

Filmed in HD for some $30m in year-2000 Canadian money, and it shows. But sadly the HD has been locked in a corporate vault due to feuding investors. All we have is recordings from TV. There’s not even a DVD.<\/p>\n

The drawbacks are the mis-cast teen Jules Verne with his jarring American accent and stage-school acting ability. Better to have had him be Nikola Tesla’s American son, and ideally played by a more capable actor. But then… they wouldn’t have had the series title and name-recognition. British secret agent Rebecca Fogg is consistently superb both in acting and action (there are a lot of stunts), and she often reminded me of Tilda Swinton. Her cousin Phileas Fogg is the main action-man and fills the role of a louche and jaded dandy-soldier well… though… he’s not David Tennant (who would have been brilliant in the role). Fogg’s servant Passepartout is often too goofy and clownish for the small screen. A brilliant physical clown, but he could have ‘dialled it back’ two notches for TV. But when the series works, it works. It’s fun, it’s pulpy, it still looks good thanks to superb storyboarding (oh, for a book of the storyboards and concept art…) \/ lighting \/ sets \/ costumes, cinematography etc. The music and audio production are fine, though three of the TV recordings have a slight echo. The digital FX are definitely from the 2000s, but quite adequate. Nothing explicitly Lovecraftian. <\/p>\n

\n

Related: There’s surprisingly little good non-anime TV steampunk. But the three-hour TV adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal<\/em> (2010), and the wild west TV steampunk series Legend<\/em> (1995, 12 episodes) look the most promising follow-on possibilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gosh, has it been five years? How time flies. I’ve at last got around to fully working through the imaginative …<\/p>\n

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