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‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ Review: Making the Leap, Again

HBO’s new adaptation of the best-selling sci-fi romance comes from a “Sherlock” creator and “Doctor Who” mainstay.

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By Mike Hale

History is the thing that happens twice, first as tragedy, then as farce. Now there’s another thing: “The Time Traveler’s Wife.” The question is whether the second time around is an improvement.

The first adaptation of the blockbuster novel by Audrey Niffenegger, a 2009 film starring Eric Bana as Henry, the time-hopping librarian, and a luminous Rachel McAdams as Clare, his long-suffering love, went for the tear ducts. From the book’s grab-bag of themes and feelings, the film latched onto predestination and sorrow and got more lugubrious as it went along.

Thirteen years later, we have an HBO series, beginning Sunday, again with the same title as the book. Created by the British writer and producer Steven Moffat , who wrote all six episodes of the first season, it can’t completely escape the book’s maudlin pull, but it offers both a more lighthearted and a tougher take than the film. It capitalizes on the possibilities for slapstick offered by Henry’s constant buck-naked, “Terminator”-style tumbles into unexpected times and places. And it restores the testiness and jealousy (and copious sex) between Clare and Henry that was muffled in the movie’s gauzy telling.

Moffat’s involvement was the reason to have some hope for, or at least be curious about, this new adaptation. The love of puzzles and sleight of hand and general narrative complexity that he has demonstrated, often with considerable ingenuity, in “Doctor Who” and “Sherlock” seemed to make him a good match for the nerdy science-fiction side of Niffenegger’s book. And the best moments in Moffat’s series are ones that get into the details of how time travel works, or that show the tricks Henry uses to communicate with himself or manipulate events across time.

It’s still “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” though, and you can’t get away from the material, a stilted mix of sentimentality, doomy fatalism, truisms about love and queasily sexualized romance that sold several million copies. Niffenegger’s gift for sexed-up fantastical melodrama drew in a ton of readers , including Moffat, who based an episode of “Doctor Who” (“The Girl in the Fireplace”) on the novel.

Given the chance to adapt the real thing, Moffat and the director David Nutter (“Game of Thrones”) have made it watchable — favoring humor and action over soap opera — but they haven’t managed to conjure the emotion, or dramatize the ideas, that so many people seem to find in the story. A device of breaking away to have older versions of Henry and Clare speak straight to the camera, as if being filmed for a documentary, echoes the book’s alternating first-person narration but also exposes the script’s notions about soul mates, absence and fate for the dull platitudes they are.

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• Entertainment
• HBO’s <em>The Time Traveler’s Wife</em> Is a Multiverse of Badness

HBO’s The Time Traveler’s Wife Is a Multiverse of Badness

O ne day at work, a 28-year-old librarian meets the 20-year-old woman who will become his wife. The thing is, she already knows him—knows that they will fall in love, marry, spend many happy years together—because he is a time traveler. Ever since she was a little girl, an older version of the man has been periodically journeying back through the decades to spend time with her. So she already adores him. And now, he’s younger and more attractive than she’s ever known him to be. Unfortunately, because he’s just now meeting her, he has yet to experience the true love that eased his various youthful traumas and is still a total mess of a human being.

This is the premise of HBO’s latest epic drama, The Time Traveler’s Wife . If you find it extremely confusing as described above, that’s because it is indeed extremely confusing. If, however, the summary makes even a lick of sense to you, chances are you’ve already encountered the story of Clare and her time-traveling soulmate Henry, in the form of the megahit 2003 novel by Audrey Niffenegger or the major motion picture starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana, from 2009. The plot has always been absurd. But after nearly two decades and one widely seen, remarkably bad adaptation, it has also aged poorly and grown redundant. It would, at this point, take a truly inspired interpretation to make a Time Traveler’s Wife series work. Sadly, this ain’t it.

It’s not hard to see why this particular adaptation, premiering May 15, might have sounded like a good idea. The show is helmed by Steven Moffat , who’s been a successful steward of time-travel series Doctor Who and, with Sherlock , Arthur Conan Doyle ’s iconic detective. Aspects of Niffenegger’s narrative have become easier for audiences to wrap their minds around. Multiverses , metaverses , time travel , and sundry other scientifically questionable riffs on quantum mechanics are currently trending in Hollywood. Multiple timelines are now practically a requirement for TV dramas. Rose Leslie , a.k.a. Game of Thrones fan favorite Ygritte, plays the feisty Clare. Casting Divergent alum Theo James as Henry might draw in some viewers who were too young for The Time Traveler’s Wife in the aughts. Plus, you can show butts on HBO—which helps when one of your leads is a heartthrob who hurtles through time naked.

Many of those on-paper pros have, in practice, turned out to be cons. Yes, non-chronological storytelling is hot right now. Shows like Shining Girls , Russian Doll , and Undone (to name three that have kicked off new seasons in the past month alone) are doing sophisticated, imaginative things with time travel. But The Time Traveler’s Wife is not that. For newcomers to the Niffeneggerverse, the conceit is that due to a vague, incurable “genetic defect,” Henry spontaneously vanishes from the present and re-materializes at some point in the past. Or, much less frequently, the future. The rules of his condition seem designed to offer maximum authorial flexibility. How much significance is there to the timing of when Henry travels and where he ends up? Some, except for when there’s none. How often does he travel? Hard to say. Does he ever travel outside his own lifetime? Occasionally. Would a real person with such an affliction manage to escape getting found out and becoming a public spectacle? No way. Do matters of free will and fatalism ever get addressed in a satisfying way? Oh, absolutely not. Do Mobius-strip, chicken-vs.-egg type impossibilities emerge around the fact that younger Clare met older Henry 14 years before 28-year-old Henry met 20-year-old Clare? So many!

These aren’t the only reasons to feel ambivalent about a relationship that revolves around the supposedly romantic idea that he becomes her treasured confidant when she’s still a kid, while her love gives him something to live for as a nihilistic young adult whose habit of showing up at random places and times in his birthday suit has led him to a lifetime of injuries, arrests and sundry criminal behavior in the name of survival. But a man over 30 essentially raising his future wife, from age 6, to be his perfect partner has even more uncomfortable connotations now than it would have in 2003. The show addresses this in only the most hilariously cursory way: the term “ grooming ” surfaces and is left to hang in the air, an item checked off the update to-do list.

The sense that Henry and Clare’s romance might not be something to root for only exacerbates the series’ many tonal inconsistencies. This Time Traveler’s Wife often dabbles in self-aware humor—maybe to preempt nitpicking of the time-travel mechanics, and maybe in hopes of avoiding the tear-jerking excesses of the movie. But the transitions between dark drama and light comedy, sci-fi and romance, wistfulness and raunch can play more like non sequiturs. It’s silly, if never exactly what I’d call funny, that there are sometimes dozens of different-aged Henrys beaming in to the same significant moment in time. Are we supposed to laugh or cry, though, during the scene where they all converge on the most tragic event of his childhood?

The show lacks momentum, partially because its neglect to establish a fixed, forward-moving “present” creates the sense of drifting unmoored through the decades. If you put aside the grooming issue, there’s just not much that’s distinctive about the characters; Clare is brassy, Henry brooding. Both leads do a fine job on their own (though Leslie strains to convey the gravitas of older age in scenes from Clare’s gray-haired years), and both represent an improvement over McAdams and Bana, who came off as even more generic. Unfortunately, though, they don’t generate much of a spark together. If any one element could have made a decent show based on such a ludicrous premise—one unfurled largely through pretentious voiceovers and predictable twists—it would have been the chemistry between the two actors.

In the absence of even that kernel of enjoyment, all The Time Traveler’s Wife has to offer is an extended, painfully literal allegory for the bromide that true love transcends time. Maybe it’s fitting that this cliché predated the birth of any viewer by centuries and will in all likelihood survive us, too. But I’m still too lost in the whole love-inception boondoggle to say for sure.

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‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ Is a Story About a Repetitive Life, Told Repetitively: TV Review

By Daniel D'Addario

Daniel D'Addario

Chief TV Critic

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When it comes to “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” what’s old is new. Quite literally.

Audrey Niffenegger’s novel, published in 2003, captured the imagination of a vast readership with its story of a marriage unmoored by a husband’s tendency to skip through time. The widespread swooning made a film adaptation, released in 2009 and starring Eric Bana as time traveler and Rachel McAdams as wife, a foregone conclusion. Now, the franchise reappears in our timeline, with Theo James and Rose Leslie taking on the lead roles in an HBO drama series that keeps Niffenegger’s complicated conceit intact.

Here, James’ Henry and Leslie’s Clare speak at times directly to camera, documentary-style, about the strangeness of their plight: Henry is unstuck in history, vanishing from linear time to pop up at moments of key importance. This is what lends his romance with Clare its sense of destiny, as, in adulthood, he was transported to meet her as a child. She was seemingly fated to be an important figure in his life. It’s also what gives the marriage its air of doom. Henry cannot meaningfully be present when he’s always moments from being snatched into the past. And the fact that Clare has met Henry at various ages but never as a senior citizen suggests a premature end lies ahead.

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This all made for more story than the feature film could get its arms around; perhaps, then, a six-episode season of television, directed by Emmy-winning “Game of Thrones” helmer David Nutter, could begin to do the job. But the fact of the previous adaptation looms over “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” 2022 edition: This is a series that struggles at times to find a new way into its story. And that story, as before, is so elaborately and granularly detailed that a novel angle of approach seems perhaps impossible. In order to do “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” executive producer Steven Moffat (of “Doctor Who” and “Sherlock”) seems to have concluded, one must stick to the Niffenegger playbook, no matter how limiting it becomes.

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One might think that a story hinging on time travel would be open and wildly free-ranging, but “The Time Traveler’s Wife” has, in all its incarnations, had a sourness to it. This show depicts someone who is not merely able to move through the eras of his life, but is compelled to do so against his will. The trick that no one has yet achieved is making what is for Henry a forced march feel for the viewer like, well, not that. James’ performance leans into Henry’s weariness, seeming at times petulant at what he’s being made to endure. Leslie, a warm and appealing presence on “Game of Thrones,” fares well by contrast, and excels particularly at carrying across some of the more florid lines of dialogue that remind viewers of this project’s literary origins. But the story fails to convince that the couple shares much more than an understanding of the obstacles keeping them apart. So much time is spent on establishing the rules of this show’s game that there’s little room to play.

Those rules, explained by Henry to friends deep into the season’s run, are elaborate: For instance, when Henry disappears, he doesn’t take his clothes with him, and so has to rapidly contrive a way to steal garments to avoid drawing attention to himself, or to fight his way out if he does. The show does a great deal of wheel-spinning around Henry’s quest to cover himself, and does what verges on a gratuitous amount of ogling of James’ nude form as well. (A tricky element for a show in which we hop from Henry’s twenties to his early middle age at random is that James perennially presents as kissed by youth, and isn’t meaningfully aged up by the production beyond changes in his hair. It begins to make sense that character ages are listed with onscreen text.) And the show addresses the genuinely tricky matter of Henry’s first meeting Clare in early life — as that onscreen text has it, when he’s 31 and she’s 6 — without reckoning with it. When Henry, in a moment of panicked emotion, refers to the pair’s relationship as “grooming,” it can feel, unfortunately, hard to argue. Simply stating that something strange is going on is not tantamount to untangling it.

And “The Time Traveler’s Wife” is indeed a strange thing: It’s a work made with true fealty to a nearly 20-year-old novel following in a film adaptation that did the same thing, undercutting opportunities that present themself to tell a story we’ve already seen in an innovative way. (Incidentally, its presence on linear HBO feels confusing as well: “The Staircase” and “Tokyo Vice” are but two of the recent HBO Max streaming original dramas that feel more in line with the Sunday-nights-on-HBO brand of prestigey quality than does this series.) Perhaps this heartfelt but unsteady series makes for a fitting example of style following substance: A story about a fellow who finds himself forced to relive his past at the expense of opportunities in the present ends up suffering the same fate.

“The Time Traveler’s Wife” premieres Sunday, May 15 on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max.

HBO. Six episodes (all screened for review).

• Production: Executive producers: Steven Moffat, Sue Vertue, Brian Minchin, Joseph E. Iberti, and David Nutter.
• Cast: Rose Leslie, Theo James.

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The time traveler's wife.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 14 Reviews
• Kids Say 26 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Tearjerker is too gloomy for tweens and younger teens.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this tearjerker, though romantic, may prove too gloomy for tweens and younger teens. The central couple shares a powerful love, but their relationship is constantly tested, sometimes to the breaking point, and there are few moments of levity. Expect some nudity (though primarily in a non…

Why Age 15+?

Language includes "s--t" (several times, often as a reaction to seeing

A couple gets in bed a few times and is shown passionately kissing and caressing

Early in the movie, there are some perilous/fiery scenes of an intense car accid

Two characters are chided for drinking too much, though both seem to recover/giv

Any Positive Content?

Though parts of the film are quite gloomy, there’s an overall sense that l

Clare and Henry are devoted to each other, despite the huge challenges they face

Language includes "s--t" (several times, often as a reaction to seeing Henry disappear for the first time...), "a--hole," "damn," "hell," "goddamn," "son of a bitch," and "oh my God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A couple gets in bed a few times and is shown passionately kissing and caressing each other; they later appear below the sheets with their shoulders bared -- when she gets out of bed, you see her naked from the rear (including buttocks). Several shots of Henry naked from behind/sideways, but the only sensitive body part shown is his buttocks. One scene shows Clare in the bath, but only her stomach and extremities are visible.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Early in the movie, there are some perilous/fiery scenes of an intense car accident. There's also some fistfighting (with some injuries), and a man is shot and is shown bleeding. Characters hunt with rifles. A woman bleeds heavily during a miscarriage. A man gets slapped after speaking harshly to a woman.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Two characters are chided for drinking too much, though both seem to recover/give it up. Some social drinking (wine, beer, etc.) by adults.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Though parts of the film are quite gloomy, there’s an overall sense that life is full of meaning and love. Clare adores Henry as he is and not as she imagines him to be, which is admirable.

Positive Role Models

Clare and Henry are devoted to each other, despite the huge challenges they face. They do quarrel and pull away from each other at times, but inevitably, love wins out. Henry commits some petty crimes (stealing, breaking and entering, cheating) out of necessity due to his condition -- he doesn't shy away from doing these things, but it's clear that he wishes he didn't have to. You could argue that Henry manipulates Clare's life unfairly, but for the most part she doesn't seem to mind.

Parents need to know that this tearjerker, though romantic, may prove too gloomy for tweens and younger teens. The central couple shares a powerful love, but their relationship is constantly tested, sometimes to the breaking point, and there are few moments of levity. Expect some nudity (though primarily in a non-sexual context), swearing ("s--t" is the strongest word used), and a few bloody, though not gory, scenes. There's also discussion of heavy topics like free will, miscarriage, death, and losing a parent. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (14)
• Kids say (26)

Based on 14 parent reviews

I don't have kids and this is what I think

Amazing, magical and beautiful, what's the story.

Clare ( Rachel McAdams ) and Henry ( Eric Bana ) are star-crossed lovers who meet and are torn apart by a unique genetic condition that arbitrarily sends him time traveling. When they first meet (from her perspective, anyway), he's in his thirties and she's still a young girl -- but they form an unlikely friendship that transcends space and time. And, eventually (or, from the start, from his perspective), they wind up together. But even their tremendous love may not be enough to sustain a relationship hobbled by Henry's sudden absences and Clare's longing for a stable life.

Is It Any Good?

For a film about the metaphysical, THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE is curiously lacking in energy. It starts out far too explanatory, like a wannabe friend who overshares. While it's true that the audience needs prodding given the material -- how to make time travel approachable? -- it nevertheless seems questionable to keep inserting explanations that have been heard before. (For instance, why Henry keeps stealing clothes wherever he turns up.)

The time-travel jump cuts make the film all the more befuddling, and although Henry's supposed to morph in age from one time period to the next, all that ever seems to change is how many wrinkles he sports and how gray his hair gets. It's not until midway through the movie, when questions about Henry's genetic makeup arise, that the film begins to really transport you -- and, by the end, it does get very emotional. (How can it not, given the heavy tugging? After all, the melancholic piano is cued at every tragic turn.) But still, somehow the end result is more tepid than tearjerking.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what keeps Clare and Henry connected despite all of their difficulties. Is their life together believable? Would Clare really stay with Henry when he's so unpredictable? How does their relationship compare to other movie pairings you've seen?

Does the film handle the topic of time travel believably (as much as is possible, that is)? Does it seem like a benefit or a curse?

If you've read the book, how do you think the movie compares? What are some of your favorite books-turned-movies?

Movie Details

• In theaters : August 14, 2009
• On DVD or streaming : February 9, 2010
• Cast : Eric Bana , Rachel McAdams , Ron Livingston
• Director : Robert Schwentke
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : New Line
• Genre : Romance
• Run time : 107 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : thematic elements, brief disturbing images, nudity and sexuality
• Last updated : June 1, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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What to watch next.

The Notebook

An Affair to Remember

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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

The Time Traveler’s Wife Review

14 Aug 2009

107 minutes

Time Traveler&#8217;s Wife, The

Though not a patch on Audrey Niffenegger¹s wonderful source novel, Robert Schwentke's delayed adaptation is not the painful hatchet-job suggested by the TV spots.

Shoehorned into 107 minutes, much of the novel¹s richness has been lost, while an appealing handful of supporting characters are left with little screentime and the score is intrusive.

All that said, the note-perfect casting of Eric Bana as time-travelling Henry and Rachel McAdams as his time-transcending life-love Clare are the movie's ace, both actors' conviction doing much to paper over its flaws, while the story's unique treatment of love and loss still cannot fail to catch at the heart.

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Season 1 – The Time Traveler's Wife

Where to watch, the time traveler's wife — season 1.

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While it's easy to get swept up in the romance of performers as appealing as Rose Leslie and Theo James, The Time Traveler's Wife often kills the mood with its overdetermined conceit.

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The time traveler’s wife — film review.

A shrewd screen adaptation by "Ghost's" Bruce Joel Rubin has put Audrey Niffenegger's novel "The Time Traveler's Wife" on speed dial.

By Kirk Honeycutt , The Associated Press August 9, 2009 4:00pm

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A shrewd screen adaptation by “Ghost’s” Bruce Joel Rubin has put Audrey Niffenegger’s novel “The Time Traveler’s Wife” on speed dial so that the heart of her time-leaping romance remains intact while all its superfluous details and rudderless characters are jettisoned. It still is an acquired taste as illogic often trumps emotions and, for some at least, the treacle comes on a little too strong toward the end.

A potential lure for female audiences — and smart counterprogramming against the summer’s testosterone-heavy tentpoles — this New Line release via Warner Bros. should open with better-than-average numbers. Its sticking power, though, is uncertain.

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Time travel is, of course, primarily the domain of science fiction, but Niffengegger’s best-selling idea was to use the device to explore a romantic relationship over time, but not in chronological order. Henry (Eric Bana), a librarian, suffers from a genetic “anomaly,” which gets labeled Chrono-Impairment. He can’t stay locked down in any particular time but rather involuntarily slips away to other periods in his life.

Thus, he meet his future artist-wife Clare when she is 6. So by the time they finally “meet for the first time,” Clare (Rachel McAdams as an adult but Brooklynn Proulx as a child) has known Henry virtually her entire life. Sounds dreadful to me, but many readers must like the notion.

Like H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man, Henry’s anomaly really is a curse. His time travels involve sudden appearances in the past or future without any clothes or money. Thus, he becomes adept in shoplifting, breaking and entering, tree-climbing and beating up people. Chicago police have a long profile on him but can never keep Henry in a patrol car long enough to actually jail him.

“Yeah, it’s a problem,” Henry says in one of the movie’s clear understatements.

Time travel does allow Henry, from a different age, to show up to replace himself when he goes missing. A much older Henry, for instance, is forced to fill in for his younger self at the couple’s wedding. Time travel also allowed Henry to escape death at age 6 when he should have been in the car accident that killed his opera-star mother (Michelle Nolden). This didn’t prevent his dad (Arliss Howard) from becoming a drunk.

Rubin’s adaptation, however, pays little attention to Henry or Clare’s families and friends, so their love story across time is brought into hard focus. Unlike the novel, Rubin maintains a better sense of forward momentum: The couple meets, dates, marries and struggles to have a baby in fairly chronological order — only with flashbacks of a different kind.

What one notices, though, is that they would be a fairly unremarkable couple without Henry’s anomaly. Bana and McAdams make you feel the pain and the ultimate acceptance of their dilemma but never convey the magic that allows the couple to persevere through such a grand but trying love. Time isn’t the only thing that keeps these two apart.

Dr. Kendrick (the always reliable Stephen Tobolowsky), a molecular geneticist, diligently works to help but ultimately might have better success with their child if Clare could only stop the miscarriages.

German-born director Robert Schwentke (“Flightplan”) keep things moving briskly enough so that the leaps in time mostly obscure the leaps in logic. His cinematographer, Florian Ballhaus, also German-born, lights with an eye for romance, and Mychael Danna’s score sometimes emphasizes its melancholy nature. Julie Weiss’ costumes could have had fun with period tastes and Henry’s frequent need to cover up with anything, but this is not a film looking for laughs.

There certainly are no light touches. After all, it’s not easy being a time traveler’s wife.

Opens: Friday, Aug. 14 (Warner Bros.)

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The Time Traveler’s Wife Review: Steven Moffat Drama Gives Us Another Girl Who Waited

Rose Leslie and Theo James are well-cast in HBO/Sky's time travel rom-com adapted by former Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat. Spoilers.

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Warning: this Review contains the time traveler’s wife spoilers.

The Time Traveler’s Wife Episode 1 Review

The Time Traveler’s Wife , HBO’s new miniseries adaptation based on Audrey Niffenegger’s novel of the same name, is taking full advantage of the extended time serialized television offers in regards to telling a story involving multiple timelines. The opening episode assumes viewers have not read the novel or seen the previous movie adaptation, but it makes the jumps in time easier to follow if you have the background of either or both. This miniseries is not for people who have already made their mind up to hate the premise but it’s for the readers of the novel who wanted more character development from the movie. 

Henry DeTamble ( Theo James ) is the time traveler in the title. His powers of time travel are limited to his actual lifespan, give or take a few years. Henry also can’t control when he does travel forward or back and disappears anywhere from minutes to months at a time. When he travels he appears naked and often has to steal clothes and supplies to survive until he returns to his current timeline. Clare Abshire ( Rose Leslie ) is the wife in the title. Clare doesn’t have powers so she sees Henry as an older man in her past and as a younger man in her present life. She knows some parts of Henry’s story but not how her own future will unfold. The friendship and/or romantic bond between them is what drives the story versus exploring other worlds or altering history. 

Although some viewers may feel the time hops are too confusing to follow, episode one provides guide marks in the form of title cards on the lower right-hand corner of the scene so you know Henry or Clare’s age when perspectives or timelines shift. Differences in hair or clothing styles also indicate where the viewer is in the timeline. The episode favors transitions via Henry’s movements and conversation versus fading to black or other more visually jarring methods. Viewers who want a linear story may find The Time Traveler’s Wife is not for them.

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The episode starts with a much older Henry and Clare filming a documentary on his life as a time traveler, then shifts to the main timeline. Claire is 20 years old and an art student in Chicago, and 28-year-old Henry is the librarian she asks for help with locating an illustrated copy of Chaucer’s tales. Henry’s co-workers have noticed his disappearing acts in the form of leaving clothes randomly on the floor. Clare is surprised to meet Henry because this is the youngest version of him she’s seen. Despite this awkwardness, Henry agrees to go out on a date with her. Their dinner conversation moves from the Chaucer book to reconciling where in time they’re meeting. Clare tells Henry that she’s seen him 152 times as an older man during her childhood. Henry is confused about how much of a connection they have but it’s clear that sparks are flying in the present as Henry invites her to come up to his apartment. 

HBO’s The Time Traveler’s Wife Cast: Theo James and Rose Leslie’s Biggest Roles

As a former Doctor Who showrunner , screenwriter Steven Moffat is no stranger to time travel stories. In fact, one could argue that this is his second adaptation of The Time Traveler’s Wife novel, the first being in Season 2 episode ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’, the stories of Amy Pond – who as a child met a much older Eleventh Doctor in Season Five premiere ‘ The Eleventh Hour ’ – and of the Doctor’s wife, River Song. Henry asks Clare when they first officially met and there is a flashback to six-year-old Clare running through the fields behind her house. She hears Henry stirring in the bushes and then asks her to steal some clothes from his house so he can get dressed. This flashback largely dodges the question of how problematic it is that six-year-old Clare is friendly with a much older man. Henry and Clare are in reality only eight years apart in age but the decision to start the main story when Clare is 20 clearly reflects some thought to mitigate these concerns, though not a full analysis. Viewers who’ve read the novel will see the original book cover recreated in these scenes, which are designed to establish how Henry’s powers work and the evolution of his relationship with Clare. 

The story moves back to 20-year-old Clare and 28-year-old Henry as she asks him if she’s seen dinosaurs or any other wonders of the past. Henry replies the closest to the dinosaurs he’s seen was at the natural history museum when he was seven. He goes to bed and then travels back in time to the museum where 28-year-old Henry shows him the ropes of time travel. When 28-year-old Henry returns to 20-year-old Clare he steals another guy’s clothes and flowers to give to Clare for their date. Clare clearly has been waiting for years to go on a date and hook up with Henry. Unfortunately for Clare, the satisfaction of finally sleeping with Henry wears off quickly when she finds the evidence of his other girlfriend Ingrid. She throws a shoe at him and leaves for a bar nearby. They argue for a bit and Claire realizes that things she doesn’t know about fully yet have to happen before 28-year-old Henry becomes 36-year-old Henry. Older Henry is watching younger Henry through the window as he’s trying to reconcile with Clare.

James and Leslie perfectly capture Henry and Clare from the novel. Henry may be a jerk but he’s also clearly scared about the future. Clare has clearly made the hard choice to stick with someone who won’t always be there. 

The episode ends with a flashforward to the documentary describing how Henry can’t stay in one place all the time. 28-year-old Henry then walks down an alley near the bar and finds a pair of feet stuck to the floor foreshadowing something further in the future. Although the audience knows Henry and Clare have a future together, there are still enough questions for the audience to want to check out the rest of the episodes. How did Henry receive his powers? What does Clare do when Henry is traveling through time? When will the foreshadowed wedding happen? Who is Ingrid? We’ll hopefully find out next time on The Time Traveler’s Wife . 

The Time Traveler’s Wife continues next Sunday the 22 nd of May on HBO Max , and Monday the 23 rd of May on Sky Atlantic in the UK.

Amanda-Rae Prescott

Amanda-Rae Prescott is a long time Outlander fan, period drama enthusiast and cosplayer. Her previous season Outlander commentary can be found at Blacklanderz and Nerdeek Life. When she's not…

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The Time Traveler's Wife  review: It's just so wrong

Rose Leslie and Theo James are a married couple with no chemistry who meet-weird when only one of them is a child.

On The Time Traveler's Wife , Theo James plays Henry, a librarian who keeps on vanishing, tumbling uncontrollably through the time stream. Past, present, future: Whenever he goes, he goes naked. The first time his wife meets him, young Clare (Everleigh McDonnell) is 6. From her perspective, a nude adult stranger just yells out of the wilderness, begging for clothes. She ransacks her dad's closet, and they secretly meet for years, and she never tells her parents about the mysterious visitor, nope, nope, nope. Nope. Noooooope.

To be clear, the drama (debuting Sunday on HBO ) has many problems: Bad wigs, limp characterization, indifferent plotting. As grown-up Clare, Rose Leslie has to say one ridiculous thing after another. When 28-year-old Henry first meets 20-year-old Clare, she has already loved his future self for years. Much of this six-episode first season focuses on their tricky courtship, from an awkward "first date" onwards. They get to know each other's friends and families — not to mention each other's past and future selves. The intention is "romantic dramedy," the effect is quite different. In the premiere, Clare straddles the man she has known since she was 6, takes off her dress, and says: "Haven't I grown?" She continues: "And I'm not the only one." See, Henry has grown an erection, nope, nope, nope. Nyet. Nein. Non. No , in Spanish.

Look. Is it weird for a little girl to hide a box of clothes for the naked guy who keeps visiting her? Yes. What if he's married to her older self, and he's as hot as a mythological god? Well. I dislike the current vogue for truth-shaming fantasy. Twilight is not about a 100-year-old man grooming a teenager. Big is not about a Manhattan woman seducing a 12-year-old boy. I mean, that is technically what those things are about, but magic creates its own logic. Creators shouldn't fear our frail morality. Some art should be problematic. Mustn't overthink everything, and Time Traveler's Wife doesn't anticipate much thinking at all. The show keeps putting overly helpful chyrons onscreen to remind you of peoples' ages. "Henry is 31, Clare is 6." Darren is covering his eyes. Forget everything I just said. Run, Clare, run!

Audrey Niffenegger's original novel was a 2003 bestseller. A movie arrived in 2009. I was alive in both timelines; I guess we were outcrying over different things? "My libido grew up around you," Clare tells Henry. "You're the living personification of everything I want, of everything you personally conditioned me to want ." Then Clare liberates herself from her four-dimensional tormentor. Just kidding! Clare learns to love his chaos while renovating him into a nicer cad. Despite a tragic backstory which involves repeated-into-absurdity decapitation, the vibe is very Gerard-Butler-romcom: The Jerk and the Woman Who Can't Help Loving the Jerk. Henry, Clare explains, is like a river. "There's only one way to survive a river," she says. "Be a rock." Or, um, swim to shore?

"There is literally no precedent for this conversation," Henry tells Clare. He's talking to his future wife, a woman he doesn't know who knows everything about him. That precise situation occurred in a famous 2008 Doctor Who episode, written by Steven Moffat. Moffat admitted to Niffenegger's influence . Now he's the writer-producer of this series. I haven't read the book, so I don't know if he's making bad changes or foregrounding extant sleaze. Eighteen-year-old Clare flirts with older Henry: "You wouldn't buy a car without a test drive, would you?" Reader, she's the car.

On Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones , Leslie exuded a toughness that felt battle-tested despite her youth. Time Traveler's Wife devolves her to lovelorn patience. One episode explores Clare's high school trauma, but also requires Leslie to play 16 amidst a drastically inauthentic portrayal of millennial teendom. James just looks furious in a way that's supposed to be charming. By episode 3, you can draw his butt from memory. By episode 4, you'll wish the butt had a writing credit. It could only be an improvement. There are mysteries that are obvious or boring, so many portentous clues about characters' futures. Loose time travel mechanics send Henry wherever the drama is. Too many lines are greeting-card lame:

"The future is just what shows up when you're looking for something else."

"Marriage: Two people trying to be the person the other one already thinks they are."

"When it comes to falling in love, nobody has any agency. That's why they call it 'falling.'"

"Don't spoil the memory of good days with the regret that they're over."

"The trouble with revisiting your childhood is nothing is quite where you left it."

"What is grief, if not love persevering?"

Sorry, that last one is from something else. The rest are from Time Traveler's Wife , which is at least bad in a funny way. This isn't some Amazon drama stretching one episode of story into eight episodes of blah. The old age makeup is impressively heinous. Teen Henry (Brian Altemus) gets sexually experimental and you'll never unsee it. There's a running gag that Henry needs to beat people up to take their clothes. He must be a Chicago urban myth: Mr. Naked, the Pants-Snatcher. And there are actual jokes about grooming, which sound a bit defensive and successfully make the grooming allegory more explicit. The fourth episode turns on a dinnertime farce about six people, most of whom have slept together, some of whom are the same whom. (One character is played by Desmin Borges, a remarkably endearing and natural performer who needs more than best-friend roles.) It's established that every part of Henry's body travels, which means baby teeth or nail clippings poof in and out around him. Amazing visual potential; the show forgets that detail immediately. And some dialogue achieves awfulness poetry:

Henry: So, how are you doing?

Character We Just Met: AIDS.

That's funny, but The Room funny. For this to work, you'd have to believe Clare and Henry are many different selves clashing: messy twenty-somethings, dysfunctional new couple, settled marrieds, anxious olds. None of that reads, possibly because their journey feels so one-sided. Clare makes Henry a better man. He makes her... a rock in the river. James' bod does glisten, though, and it's rare these sensitive days to witness a calamity so spectacular. Nudity plus travesty give Time Traveler's Wife a unique appeal. Come for the ass. Stay for the crap. D

The HBO limited series premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

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The Time Traveler's Wife

Henry is an ordinary man with an extraordinary gift, a gene that allows him to travel through time involuntarily. Claire, his wife, finds it difficult to cope with his ability. Henry is an ordinary man with an extraordinary gift, a gene that allows him to travel through time involuntarily. Claire, his wife, finds it difficult to cope with his ability. Henry is an ordinary man with an extraordinary gift, a gene that allows him to travel through time involuntarily. Claire, his wife, finds it difficult to cope with his ability.

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• Trivia Theo James and Rose Leslie were both on the TV show Downton Abbey. Leslie played Gwen a maid who ended up leaving to become a secretary and James played Kamal Pamuk the son of a Turkish Diplomat who causes a scandal by dying in the bed of the Earl's eldest daughter.
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The Time Traveler’s Wife is a Waste in Every Possible Way

The real star of HBO’s adaptation of “The Time Traveler’s Wife”—based on Audrey Niffenegger ’s 2003 novel, which was turned into a movie starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana in 2009—isn’t Rose Leslie , who plays Claire, and whom you’d hardly recognize as Ygritte from “Game of Thrones,” due to her near-perfect American accent. Theo James —who plays Henry, Claire’s creeptastic time-traveling boyfriend and eventual husband—isn’t the star either, and not just because his wooden performance would be more interesting if he were actually a tree. No, the real star of this woeful, pointless television programme is its toxic gender and sexual politics.

The plot here could have been created by shoving every rom-com made between 1995 and 2005, plus a copy of Christopher Nolan ’s “ Interstellar ,” into an autoregressive language model. When she’s six years old, Claire Abshire meets Henry de Tamble (and people think my name is weird) in a meadow near her rich parents’ idyllic country home. Henry is in his 30s. He is naked when he first meets Claire, a child , so he requests that she bring him some of her father’s clothes, and leave them in a box under a rock, so they stay dry because he might/will return. She happily performs this task, and the pair strike up what the series would like to call a friendship, but I prefer to think of it as straight-up grooming. From ages 6 to 18, Claire, in her own words, shapes her libido around Henry. Claire flirts with him once she’s 16, even though the Henry she has met has always been at least 30 years old, often even older. (She even says to him that she resented his unavailability during her “very horny adolescence.”) Based on his comments, tween Claire deduces that in the future, she and Henry are married. Eww. 

It gets worse. The Henry that Claire meets in her 20s, when she is an art student and he is working in a library, is “an asshole.” He drinks too much, and it is implied he is an abusive boyfriend. Claire longs for the Henry she met when she was a child , and cannot have that Henry yet because it is she, through her love, care, and consistent support, who turns him into the loving, caring, and supportive Henry he becomes. 

Different versions of Henry hop around timelines so convoluted even Abed Nadir from “Community” would find them impossible to analyze. Sometimes they are linear, sometimes they’re not, and no matter the timeline the writing, acting, directing, editing, and music range from mediocre to horrible. Blake Neely ’s hackneyed string-and-piano-heavy score, which could have easily been borrowed from any Lifetime or Hallmark movie, backs almost every scene in the series. Using music as a substitute for storytelling doesn’t work if the story is preposterous to begin with. The color grading in the series is, 99% of the time, yellow, orange, and pink, but at a party just before Henry and Claire’s wedding, the lighting suddenly changes to [insert “Scooby Doo”-style ghost noises] dark blue and grey. Thank you, writers’ room, for signaling dark and serious things are about to happen! 

Henry does not control where he goes, or when, or for how long, but multiple versions of him, at different ages, show up at significant events: the violent car accident that killed his mother, an opera singer ( Kate Siegel , whose performance is bizarrely over the top, and whose hair and wardrobe seem stuck in a soap opera from 1978), which Henry witnessed because he was in the backseat. As the “story” gets closer to his and Claire’s wedding day, he travels back and forth from the hours just before he’s due at the church, and various grim moments in the couple’s often stormy marriage. Oh, I almost forgot: interspersed throughout the six episodes to which I was subjected are moments when Henry and Claire break the fourth wall. They separately make video recordings of themselves after their wedding, presumably for the daughter it is implied they will have. All we get out of these scenes is what happens when Leslie and James meet the hair and makeup department’s prosthetics budget.

“The Time Traveler’s Wife” features exactly three decent performances. First is Rose Leslie, best known for setting Jon Snow (Kit Harington) straight (and then marrying him in real life ); she does her best to elevate the material. Her movements and facial expressions are considered, occasionally sweetly moving, reflecting a depth unmatched by almost all her castmates. (As for Henry, I feel more excitement installing a new roll of toilet paper than from watching James act. His facial expressions, like the weather in Los Angeles, never change.) The second is Jason David, who plays child Henry. His performance as a boy who has begun to appear and disappear from school, and even his own bed, is imbued with age-appropriate wonder and fear, but he is heartbreakingly corrupted by older versions of himself, who teach him how to fight, steal, and lie in order to survive each trip through time. (Showing up naked in random places is quite tricky, you see.) 

I’d begun missing David onscreen when I breathed a small sigh of relief: Desmin Borges arrives to play Gomez, Claire’s college roommate’s boyfriend, and the show’s third good performance. There are few actors working today more criminally underrated than Borges, whose arc on FX’s “You’re the Worst” is among the best TV performances of the last two decades. Gomez is a lawyer, and utterly bewildered though he is by the two versions of Henry who show up to dinner at Claire’s apartment, he is advised by older Henry to support younger Henry, because “he will need you.” For the love of all that is holy, why do women and people of color have to put aside our own exhaustion and emotions to support white men? Borges provides vital doses of goofball energy, countered by moments of pensive persistence. He and Leslie play well off each other, and their scenes together seem to take place in a different, and better, show. 

I do not understand how Steven Moffat went from “Sherlock” to developing this series. Like Netflix’s rubbish “Anatomy of a Scandal,” “The Time Traveler’s Wife” is lazy, a waste of HBO’s enormous resources. We’re all stuck in the same cycle: corporations feed us a steady diet of vapid content, we consume it, they make money off it while we learn to crave it. It’s easy to make dreck. It takes time to make something good.

Six episodes screened for review. Premieres Sunday, May 15. 

Nandini Balial

Nandini Balial is a film and TV critic, essayist, and interviewer.

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'The Time Traveler's Wife' is still weird, even as a TV show

Linda Holmes

Rose Leslie and Theo James as Clare and Henry. Macall Polay/HBO hide caption

Rose Leslie and Theo James as Clare and Henry.

Some books really might be unadaptable.

The Time Traveler's Wife was a very popular 2003 novel that told a complicated tale. Beginning when Clare Abshire is six, she has meetups with an adult man in a clearing near her house. He says that he's from the future. He eventually reveals that he's her husband. Her future husband. His name is Henry, and he has a problem, which is that he comes unstuck in time and involuntarily travels to either the past or the future. He also doesn't control where or when he'll be when he lands, but he has a tendency to travel to places that are important in his life, which is how he keeps landing again and again in Clare's clearing – because they're married in the future, so she's important.

The book was made into a film in 2009, starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana. It got lousy reviews. Now it's back as an HBO series with a six-episode first season (note the word "first") starring Rose Leslie and Theo James. Unfortunately, this doesn't really work either. For lack of a better explanation, this story is just too ... weird.

The Time Traveler's Wife premiers on Sunday on HBO.

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The Time Traveler's Wife has the same problems that most time-travel fiction does when it comes to explaining the logistics. Presumably, there was an original timeline where Clare and Henry met "naturally," and it was only after that when Henry started traveling back to Clare's childhood to hang out with her, which is why he's always a grown man when she sees him. But that timeline no longer exists, because he altered it. And what that means is that now, as her life now really exists, Clare marries him only after spending most of her life being visited by him, starting when she was six , and being told that they were destined to marry, and having sex with him when she was 18 and the version of him that landed in her life was something like 40.

There is a metaphorical interpretation of this story that's rather poignant: Clare meets her dream man as a child, but when she actually encounters him when she's 20 and he's 26 (and he's in his original timeline, where he knows he time-travels but doesn't "yet" recognize her), he's not that person yet. She is in love with the person she believes he's going to turn into, the 40-year-old she already slept with, the man – as she says at one point – around whom her entire notion of romance and sex was formed. She is chasing her ideal, while the man Henry is in the moment remains disappointing. And all through their relationship, he keeps leaving, vanishing without warning, showing up minutes or hours or days later, having been somewhere else. She is at the mercy of his comings and goings, and building any kind of stability is practically impossible when their lives are dominated by the unpredictability of his travels.

Theo James as Henry and Everleigh McDonell as young Clare. Macall Polay/HBO hide caption

Theo James as Henry and Everleigh McDonell as young Clare.

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But when you make this idea of waiting and hoping literal, when you actually portray it on a screen – especially with the kind of light romcom energy that creator Steven Moffat brings to the scenes between Clare and Henry – it seems creepy, like a comedy about a woman who ends up in a relationship she never had a chance to choose or not.

It's not that there's nothing about it that has any appeal. Leslie and James are both cute, and they have perfectly workable chemistry, and when they meet in "real life," at the moment where she knows him but he doesn't know her (because he has not yet begun time-traveling), they have a pleasantly flirty time. And because Henry can time-travel to moments when other versions of himself already exist, the show has some fun with an older Henry insulting the version of himself that is young and stupid (wouldn't we all?).

It bears mention that the show also relishes the part of Henry's story that says he can take nothing with him when he time-travels, so he always arrives everywhere naked. Rarely has even the nudity-friendly HBO shown an individual naked behind as much as it shows Theo James's naked behind in this show – it might as well be on the poster. James spends much of his adventures gleaming with what seems to be a mist of baby oil, sculpted and on display as Henry sneaks around in the cold (yikes) or through bushes (ouch) or gets into fights (oof).

It feels like Moffat is trying to evade the discomfiting quality of this story – the way it can make Henry seem inescapably manipulative even if it's not his intent – by keeping it light. He introduces playfulness around wacky time-travel situations while trying to hang on to sad moments in which Clare (as an older woman, filmed mockumentary-style) (no, I don't know why they chose this framing) discusses her loneliness and her losses. It's strangely perky at times and gory in others, fixating on a (very) bloody moment from a violent incident in Henry's life and showing it again ... and again ... and again.

This story is meant to be powerfully sad, but the adaptation never comes together emotionally other than as an abstract idea, because that sadness is so closely tied to the uncomfortable fact that a belief in the romantic notion of destiny crowds out the romantic notion of freely choosing a partner.

It's hard to imagine what one would do to make this more palatable – whether it would work better if it were weepier, or if it were darker, or if it were shorter or longer. It may be that just as monsters are often more frightening in a book than they can possibly be when they are made physically real, the slippery notion of a man from the future telling a very young woman he's her future husband is more squirm-inducing when you actually see it than it might be in the abstract.

Perhaps only the nudity really translates.

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Book Review: “The Time Traveller’s Wife”

I wasn’t sure Audrey Niffeneger’s “The Time Traveller’s Wife” was going to be for me.

At the time, Mrs Digital Ed had just finished it, and was strongly recommending I give it a try. 

But I’d seen the trailers for the 2009 film adaptation , which succeeded in making it look rather like a slightly off-beat Mills and Book affair.

Aggressively assured this was not the case, I relented.

And I’m glad I did.

A love story

At the novel’s core is the love story between Henry and Clare — a story that jumps back and forward through time, thanks to Henry’s Chron0-Impairment.

This unique medical condition means Henry is constantly, involuntarily travelling back and forth through time.

One of the many strange results of this? By the time Henry meets Clare for the very first time, she’s already known him for most of her life. 

And this is what sets “The Time Traveller’s Wife” apart.

The two characters are very definitely in love with one another. In fact, almost too much — some critics have even called Audrey Niffenegger’s writing “emotionally trite”, complaining that she over-writes the emotional passages between her characters. 

But the longer the novel progresses, and the more times Henry travels into Clare’s past, the more the reader is forced to confront a very difficult question:

Has he (accidentally or deliberately) exerted too much influence on her early life? Has he, knowing what he knows from their “future” relationship, manipulated her into falling in love with him?

No clear answer

There’s no clear answer here, and untangling the threads of how this central relationship works is intentionally difficult.

If they love one another, does it matter in the end? Only the reader can decide in the end.

While it may be over-written on occasion, “The Time Traveller’s Wife” is a tremendous book, and one that’s nowhere near as straightforward as it initially seems.

As for the film, which certainly looked as though it had taken a different direction, I decided not to bother. 

After I’d finished the book, I attended a signing in Edinburgh where Audrey Niffenegger confirmed she hadn’t bothered seeing it either.

“I wrote the book,” she said drily. “I didn’t write the film.”

For more book reviews from the “Friend” team, click here .

Iain McDonald

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Iain McDonald I am the Digital Content Editor at the “Friend”, making me responsible for managing the flow of interesting and entertaining content on the magazine’s website and social media channels.

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