The Time Traveler's Wife

Moffat has rediscovered his mojo here. A mind-bending weepy, The Time Traveler’s Wife delivers chills and spills while also saying something profound about human existence and the eternal shadows cast by trauma and heartache.

Delivers a welcome fairytale with a “Pushing Daisies” vibe, but with such a tight initial focus on just these two characters, one wonders if it can go the distance.

Taking certain story weaknesses into account, this version absolutely comes the closest to replicating the feeling one can get from reading Niffenegger's book, which had its own addictive qualities.

Every time it feels as though the show might actually want to have a real conversation about fate, free will, or consequences, it slides away from the implication without ever fully looking it in the face.

Sometimes these efforts are awkward. Sometimes these efforts are outright corny. But occasionally—and especially when Moffat and Nutter are willing to take their hands off the throttle and let the show live in the weird emotional intricacies of the relationship it’s supposed to be about—James and especially Leslie manage to make you understand why Henry and Claire’s love is so compelling.

Stars Rose Leslie and Theo James have an easygoing bicker-banter chemistry that lets this fantasy rom-com slide past its many ridiculous and overtly sentimental moments. No, it’s not a show for the ages, but it works as a ray of empty-headed spring-summer sunny optimism.

It's an uneven watch, however, with some things working well (such as their domestic bickering) and others not so well.

[Steven Moffat] takes the melodrama down a notch and salts the schmaltz with wit where he can. ... But it has two intrinsic problems to overcome – and hurdles one more successfully than the other. The first is the ick factor occasioned by Henry’s many visits as a grown man to Clare as a child. ... The other problem is more deep-rooted. Niffenegger’s story is built around Clare’s passivity. Her life, while not static or unfulfilled professionally, is defined by waiting for Henry.

The Time Traveler’s Wife does not have the power of the unexpected. But it has a modest, formulaic appeal that will likely keep you going back (and back) for more.

The finished product is full of contradictions and clunky moments, but also a lot of heart and ingenuity. It’ll be interesting to see whether it satisfies book purists and newcomers alike, or struggles to thread the needle with either of them.

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 tiresome and redundant series. The talent is good, including director David Nutter (“Game of Thrones”), writer-producer Steven Moffat (“Sherlock,” “Doctor Who”), and lead actors Rose Leslie and Theo James. But the result is unsatisfying.

It plays out like a passable Channel 5 daytime film, not a supposedly prestige series from HBO. The adaptation is so lazy that episodes begin with the lead characters reading lines straight into the camera, rather than anyone making the effort to work them into the script.

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.

[Theo James] plays Henry as snarky, shallow, wisecracking and flippant far too often. Rose Leslie (“The Good Fight”) is the grounded center of the series as Clare. But, as the episodes drag on, we keep waiting for her to realize that all she ever talks about with Henry is his situation.

It's an admirable effort, but one that simply underscores how unadaptable this material might be -- the bottom line being that if time is indeed precious, these six episodes finally feel too much like a waste of it.

There’s nothing about this new version of The Time Traveler’s Wife that hooked us in so we could take this romantic ride with Henry and Claire. It doesn’t help that the show is cheekier than it really needs to be.

Theo James and Rose Leslie are] done no favors by a narrative that never seems to have wondered who Clare, especially, is beyond a time traveler’s wife — nor by their inability to generate any real sparks between them, much less any brilliant enough to serve as a beacon through space and time. ... The Time Traveler’s Wife fails so direly to mine any romance from its central premise that it starts to build a case for the opposite.

This is still a grown man interacting with the woman he'll eventually be sleeping with while she is a child playing with a toy horse. He's weirded out by it, and rightly so; therefore, so are we. Somehow there must be a means of pulling off these scenes in ways that don't make a person's skin crawl, but Moffat has not cracked that nut. ... Whether the main flaw in "The Time Traveler's Wife" is in the flatness of the prose or the emotional disconnect in the delivery is hard to say, but together they conspire to transform Clare into little more than a construct waiting to be animated.

So unsatisfying. ... The two [Theo James and Rose Leslie] have solid chemistry, and are charismatic. ... But based on these six episodes, I’d much rather watch Leslie and James using their talents elsewhere.

To be clear, the drama has many problems: Bad wigs, limp characterization, indifferent plotting. As grown-up Clare, Rose Leslie has to say one ridiculous thing after another.

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. ... 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.

The most off-putting thing about The Time Traveler’s Wife, right from the jump, is how strangely chintzy and thin it looks. ... Bad news. It does get more sad, but it absolutely does not know how to make that emotional gravity tie into the silly fun stuff.

[Theo James'] 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. ... No matter the timeline the writing, acting, directing, editing, and music range from mediocre to horrible.