Our Journey 'Around the World in 80 Days' Seems to Be at An End

Being an Anglophile generally comes with certain realities: Your favorite British series will almost always be shorter than their American counterparts. They will typically star one of the same dozen or so actors (this is a feature, not a bug, by the way). And you'll spend a prodigious amount of time waiting — either for a program to make its way to America, another season of said property to arrive, or a single scrap of news about its future to surface. Most of us have, out of necessity, become extremely talented internet researchers, and some of us (read: me) may even have things like Google alerts set up to let us know immediately whenever an update about a particularly niche property arrives. (Extraordinary, I am looking at you. Season 3, when??)

This is because even if we get positive news, we don't trust it. And with good reason—extended silence rarely means anything good. Such is the case with Around the World in 80 Days, a charmingly old-school adventure romp based on the classic Jules Verne novel, which was reportedly renewed for a second season several years ago and has languished in development obscurity ever since. According to the latest update, it looks like it may stay that way.

The series, which premiered over the Christmas holidays in December 2021 before bowing in the U.S. in January, was a modest hit, a throwback to the sort of wholesome Saturday night-style family programming the entertainment industry once embraced. It starred David Tennant (Rivals) as globetrotter Phileas Fogg, the gambler whose outlandish bet inspires the journey of the story's title, alongside Ibrahim Koma (Mother Is Wrong) and Leonie Benesch (Vienna Blood) as his companions Passepartout and Abigail Fortescue.