Gulliver's Travels is a U.S. TV miniseries

Miniseries

A miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...

 based on Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...

's novel of the same name

Gulliver's Travels

Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels , is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of...

, produced by Jim Henson Productions and Hallmark Entertainment. This miniseries is notable for being one of the very few adaptations of Swift's novel to feature all four voyages. The miniseries aired in the UK on channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

, and in the USA on NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 in February 1996. The miniseries stars Ted Danson

Ted Danson

Edward Bridge “Ted” Danson III is an American actor best known for his role as central character Sam Malone in the sitcom Cheers, and his role as Dr. John Becker on the series Becker. He also plays a recurring role on Larry David's HBO sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm and starred alongside Glenn Close...

, Mary Steenburgen

Mary Steenburgen

Mary Nell Steenburgen is an American actress. She is best known for playing the role of Lynda Dummar in Jonathan Demme's Melvin and Howard, which earned her an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.-Early life:...

, Peter O'Toole

Peter O'Toole

Peter Seamus Lorcan O'Toole is an Irish actor of stage and screen. O'Toole achieved stardom in 1962 playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia, and then went on to become a highly-honoured film and stage actor. He has been nominated for eight Academy Awards, and holds the record for most...

, John Gielgud

John Gielgud

Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

, Omar Sharif

Omar Sharif

Omar Sharif is an Egyptian actor who has starred in Hollywood films including Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Funny Girl. He has been nominated for an Academy Award and has won two Golden Globe Awards.-Early life:...

, Shashi Kapoor

Shashi Kapoor

Shashi Kapoor , born Balbir-Raj Prithviraj Kapoor on 18 March 1938 in Calcutta , is an award-winning Indian film actor and film producer. He has also been film director and assistant director in Hindi Films. He is a member of the Kapoor family, a film dynasty in India's Bollywood cinema...

, Warwick Davis

Warwick Davis

Warwick Ashley Davis is an English actor. He is most notable for playing the title characters in Willow and the Leprechaun film series, as well as for his roles in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi and the Harry Potter movies. Davis currently stars in the sitcom Life's Too Short, written...

, Kristin Scott Thomas

Kristin Scott Thomas

Kristin A. Scott Thomas, OBE is an English actress who has also acquired French nationality. She gained international recognition in the 1990s for her roles in Bitter Moon, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The English Patient....

, Alfre Woodard

Alfre Woodard

Alfre Ette Woodard is an American film, stage, and television actress. She has been nominated once for an Academy Award and Grammy Awards, 17 times for Emmy Awards , and has also won a Golden Globe and three Screen Actors Guild Awards.She is known for her role in films such as Cross Creek, Miss...

, Kate Maberly

Kate Maberly

Kate Elizabeth Cameron Maberly is an English actress and musician. She has appeared in film, television, radio and on stage.-Early life:...

, Tom Sturridge

Tom Sturridge

Thomas Sidney Jerome "Tom" Sturridge is an English actor best known for his work in Being Julia, Like Minds, and The Boat That Rocked. As of September 2010, he was filming a role in Walter Salles's highly anticipated film adaptation of Jack Kerouac's On the Road.-Personal life:Sturridge was born...

, Richard Wilson and Nicholas Lyndhurst

Nicholas Lyndhurst

Nicholas Simon Lyndhurst is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as Rodney Trotter in Only Fools and Horses, Gary Sparrow in Goodnight Sweetheart, and as Adam Parkinson in Carla Lane's series Butterflies...

. It was shot in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

.

In this version, Dr. Gulliver has returned to his family after a long absence. The action shifts back and forth between flashbacks of his travels and the present where he is telling the story of his travels and has been committed to an insane asylum. (The flashback framework and the incarceration in the asylum are not in the novel.) While the miniseries remains faithful to the novel, the ending has been changed for a more upbeat conclusion. In the book, Gulliver is so impressed with the Utopian country of the Houyhnhnms that when he returns to England he eventually chooses to live out his life among the horses in his barn, rather than with his family. In the miniseries, he recovers from this obsession and returns to his wife and children.

The series won 5 Emmy Awards including in the Best Miniseries category

Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries

The Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries represents excellence in the category of miniseries that are considered either six hours or more, or more than two parts....

.

Production

It took years to find the financial backing for the miniseries. The project required a good deal of Special Effects work. Jim Henson's Creature Shop

Jim Henson's Creature Shop

Jim Henson's Creature Shop is a company founded in 1979 by puppeteer Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets, and Frank Oz.It was originally created as a result of the observation that the team that had been put together for The Dark Crystal was extremely hard to recreate for Labyrinth, since the...

 created several CGI wasps and some prosthetic make-up for the Yahoos of Gulliver's fourth voyage. Producer Duncan Kenworthy

Duncan Kenworthy

Duncan H. Kenworthy, OBE is a British film and television producer, and co-founder of the production company DNA Films. He is currently a producer at Toledo Productions....

 said that, "It [Gulliver's Travels] was something I'd been developing while Jim was still alive. [...] We wanted to do the whole book, and that was what interested Jim."

Reception

The miniseries was generally well received by critics. Ken Tucker

Ken Tucker

Ken Tucker was an English footballer who played as a left winger....

 of Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

wrote that, "Everything about this production is surprising, from its choice of Gulliver -- Cheers' Ted Danson in an excellent wig -- to its startling fidelity to Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel," and called it a, "...big, gaudy, funny production that feels free to give full reign to Swift's blithe vulgarity."

External links