According to The Wrap, Friends creator Marta Kaufman is developing a TV version of Audrey Niffenegger’s best-selling 2003 novel The Time Traveler’s Wife — the movie adaptation of which opened last weekend to $19.2 million — for ABC. You know, the ongoing travails of a man unstuck in time while the woman he loves is fraught with both issues of abandonment and fear for her husband’s safety is an interesting idea of a weekly drama. So interesting, someone already did it. It was called Journeyman and NBC canceled it in 2007, before it ever made it to a full season.
There are, as they say, no new ideas under the sun. And, to be fair, the novel was written years before Journeyman hit the airwaves. But this concept has been tested on American television audiences and they found it wanting. Sure, there’s more than one way to skin a chronologically untethered cat. And perhaps the name-value of Time Traveler’s Wife will make Kaufman’s take more palatable. Time will tell.
Would you tune in for ABC’s The Time Traveler’s Wife? Did you watch, and love, NBC’s Journeyman? Or do you prefer your time travel to come with Deloreans and/or killer robots?
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This series does not need to happen. The movie said it all, and the book was anticlimactic. I don’t see a show like this lasting long at all.
Lame! This proves that they are no original ideas left in Hollywood. They are just reguritating old ideas and failing miserably.
Didn’t they try to make a series out of My Big Fat Greek Wedding too? I recall that being awful.
Without a doubt, the series will be canceled before a full season is confirmed. Yet, it would be interesting to watch as I did enjoy “Journeyman” too.
I loved Journeyman, and I felt that it had more compelling drama than the book offered. Because we wanted to learn why he was travelling, what purpose it held. Remaking this as some sappy love series does not pique my interest. Journeyman remains one of my favorite series of all time, and this would just be a waste to make the show.
I loved Journeyman, and really wanted to learn how and why he was traveling through time–it was really ramping up the intrigue just in time to be axed. Maybe if the networks didn’t cancel shows so quickly, they would actually find themselves ahead of the curve when the popularity of a certain genre exploded (think Moonlight and The Movie That Must Not Be Named.)
The movie was bad enough a TV series is not needed.
I LOVED Journeyman. Can’t they just make more episodes of Journeyman and call it The Time Travelers Wife?
Here, here! I agree.
Doctor Who did a similar story line for 1 episode. It was sweet, but I don’t see how it could be an ongoing series.
The book is beautiful. I’m reading it now, and it’s just a perfect snapshot of this couples’ somewhat-less-than-ordinary lives.
I haven’t seen the film.
A television series would not focus on past mysteries or crimes, I don’t think, as Journeyman did — instead it would always come back to the central characters, as in the book. Time is more finite and linear in the TTW book than in Journeyman; he doesn’t affect changes, he just enforces what has already happened for him in his present. Also, he loses all his clothing (and fillings, etc.) when he involuntarily jumps, so he spends time struggling to obtain clothes and to survive. What’s more, though Henry jumps around in time, it is Claire who is the lifeline, the center, the true timeline. She is key.
I could see it working well, but it would work much better as a ‘British-style’ show – cap it to 2-3 seasons, plot it out, and let it role. As an ongoing series? Not sure how that would fly.
Why make it…everyone knows he dies at the end.
Clearly ABC is looking for the next “LOST” even though they deny it.
BRING BACK JOURNEYMAN!!
I liked Journeyman. It had a rough start, but the cancellation seemed to come at the time when it was hitting it’s stride. No, the time-travel show is certainly not original, but I might be willing to at least give “The Time Traveler’s Wife” show a chance
Journeyman was also a retread of the superior Quantum Leap. There is no originality left.