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The time heist begins in Time Bandits’ first Apple TV Plus trailer

The time heist begins in Time Bandits’ first Apple TV Plus trailer

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The new adventure series premieres on July 24th.

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In the official trailer for Time Bandits, the new Apple TV Plus series from Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement seems to revel in every bit of the dreamlike pseudo-reality of the 1981 film it’s based on. The show focuses on a young kid named Kevin (Kal-El Tuck) who finds a time portal in his room and links up with a band of time-hopping thieves. It’s set to premiere on July 24th for Apple TV Plus subscribers and runs for 10 episodes.

While the series is an adaptation of Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits, the trailer makes it clear it’s also its own thing with different characters, time periods, and situations. The show controversially replaced the Time Bandits themselves, originally played entirely by a cast of little people, with actors like Lisa Kudrow and Rune Temte.

But the outfits and fantastical environments look similar, if much cleaner than Gilliam’s cluttered (in a good way) visual style, and the whimsy seems largely intact.

Apple TV Plus has had plenty of other genre shows lately, from the multiverse mystery Dark Matter to the detective series Sugar. It also adds to the service’s ever-growing library of high-budget sci-fi content. Time Bandits stands out as a licensed property, though, something that Apple has mostly avoided doing for its productions.

Besides Tuck, other Time Bandits stars include Lisa Kudrow, Rune Temte, Tadhg Murphy, Roger Jean Nsengiyumva, and Kiera Thompson.