Take me to the world,
Where I can walk for miles with you,
Take me to the world that’s real, show me how it’s done,
Teach me how to laugh, to feel, move me to the sun,
Just hold my hand whenever we arrive,
Take me to a world where I can be alive.
Stephen Sondheim
“Take Me to the World” from “Evening Primrose”
Winter kept us inside, so my grandsons Bryce and Tyler and I took a trip around the world in 70 days. Each Wednesday, with two interruptions, we watched eight episodes of Around the World in 80 Days, a PBS Masterpiece mini-series from 2021, starring David Tennant as Phileas Fogg, Ibrahim Kona as his valet Passepartout (Pas-par-TOO) and Leonie Benesch as journalist Abigail Fix.
Talk about innocents abroad — sprung not from Mark Twain but the fertile imagination of Jules Verne. And we three innocents clambered aboard for the ride. It took a while to warm up to the characters, and for the characters to warm up to each other, but in each episode, along with life-and-death complications, we watched these figments of imagination come to terms with each other and themselves.
We followed their progress on a small globe, just as the Reform Club in London followed the progress of their wayward member and his unlikely accomplices on a giant map on the wall of the sitting room where Fogg, a seemingly incorrigible fop, had wasted 20 years sitting in the same armchair with the same companions doing nothing with his life of any note — until one day he receives a postcard with a one-word message on the back: “Coward.”
Hmmm.
That same day he reads an article about modern (by 1872 standards) transportation technology advancing to the point where, theoretically, it would be possible to travel around the world in 80 days. His so-called club friends (and the woman who accused him of cowardice) goad him into making a wager that he can take that journey, and he leaves immediately, accompanied by a pseudo-valet (Passepartout) and followed by an ambitious journalist (Abigail Fix) who wrote the article that sparked his trip.
Vastly under-prepared, their odyssey sure to fail, with each near catastrophe the companions discover unexpected resourcefulness and resilience to keep going, and they witness the curious emergence of character, surprising themselves and mystifying the others. Each, at various points, feels betrayed by the others, then finds forgiveness.
It is a grand tale of high adventure, and the boys were very much on board. The benefits of home viewing allowed for plenty of questions and commentary as we discussed racism, interracial romance, economic inequality, and class hierarchy — as well as their surprisingly detailed explanation of how steam engines work. How they figured this out I have no clue. They learned how different the world was 150 years ago and how it is still the same. And they watched these eccentrics grow significantly as human beings, becoming co-equals and devoted friends in spite of their own foolishness and society’s ridiculous restrictions.
We munched on caramel popcorn, as we snuggled under blankets — couch travel at its finest, as educational as it was entertaining. It got us through the long, cold winter (along with bowling, Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit, and games of foosball).
A letter to the future:
Boys, though by now you are no longer boys, I wish I could go around the world with you, however long that might take, but I loved watching this journey with you when you were 11. I have seen some of the world. It is an amazing place. Maybe you will travel far and wide someday, perhaps with someone you love, as Phileas should have gone with Estella when he had the chance. He didn’t have the courage then, but he found it later — and, in the process, found himself.
I won’t live long enough to see how all your adventures turn out, but you will go far, inside and out, seeing much and, as Louie Armstrong sang in “A Wonderful World,” learn far more than I’ll ever know.
Though we won’t go “around the world” with you, all of us who love you dearly are trying to “take you to the world,” as in Stephen Sondheim’s song mentioned up top. It’s a big, beautiful world with some ugliness in it, just like in this mini-series, but that’s not the world’s fault. It’s ours, and I hope you will contribute, in your own way, small or large, to changing it for the better.
In the meantime, our job is to take you to the dock, or the train station, or the airport or even a hot air balloon launching pad — or simply to the front door that leads to the road that goes ever on and on — to see you off. And just like Phileas and Abigail and Passepartout, you will discover that you have what it takes, most of it already deep down inside you, waiting for the moment you need it.
Bon Voyage!