The Time Traveller’s Wife TV series: Grand romance can’t escape the weird age gap

As much as the grand romance can seduce with its exhilarating and sad story, it can’t avoid the elephant in the room.

When Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife was released in 2003, public awareness around grooming and predatory behaviour was far less advanced than it is now.

So the story of how Clare and the time-travelling Henry fell for each other was swept up in the grand romance of love, passion and devotion. The fact that they first meet (for her) when she is six and he is an adult was a bit by-the-by, underplayed in favour of the strength of Niffenegger’s exhilarating story.

Instead, it was just a quirky start to an all-consuming relationship that felt like destiny.

Almost two decades later, a new TV adaptation of The Time Traveller’s Wife has to address the age gap elephant in the room – and the question becomes whether the weight of the storytelling is enough to overcome the glaring awkwardness.

This. This is never not weird. Picture: Binge/HBO

It’s a mixed bag. The series, written for the screen by Steven Moffat (Sherlock, Doctor Who) and starring Rose Leslie and Theo James, is a charming and involving miniseries that is buoyed by its leads’ palpable chemistry.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Henry (James) is an involuntary time traveller. Thanks to a genetic defect, he pops in and out of (mostly) his own timeline, gravitating to the people most important to him.

That person is Clare (Leslie), who he visits as a child from the ages of six to 18, until they meet in the same timeline when she is 20 and he is 28. But Henry and Clare have never been visited by any version of Henry that is older than 42, so they know something is coming.

Thanks to its beloved source material, the writing is solid, and the production values are a touch more than passable. It also clips along at a smashing pace, not wasting much of its six-episode run.

It’s not just the sparring in individual scenes that makes you root for Clare and Henry, it’s also in what Moffat translates onto the screen of Niffenegger’s contention that even though all romances are fleeting, making the most of every moment together is what makes it all worthwhile.

The determinism of the future – that it ends – hangs over everything but that’s exactly why the present must be relished, and it makes a convincing case for why Clare and Henry’s sad love story is worth watching. Because while it has its share of moments that you wish it weren’t, it also has moments that are potent – much like any romance.

Much more age appropriate. Picture: Binge/HBO

Unfortunately, the series is never so engrossing that you forget about Clare and Henry’s interactions when she is a child, especially as that relationship develops in tandem with their “present day” one. There is always that niggly feeling it’s not quite right, and the show doesn’t do enough to assuage that impression.

It tries. In the chronology of the series, the scene of him at 28 meeting her at 20 is shown first. And Leslie and James are, in real life, only two years apart (compared to the 10 years between Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana in the movie version), so visually, they look like contemporaries in their scenes together.

But a recreation of the book’s cover, the shot of her little black Mary Janes and white frilly socks next to his man-sized brown derby lace-ups are a potent reminder of the unease.

The new TV adaptation is aware of this. It makes a very conscious joke about grooming in the first episode and there are hand-wringing conversations about both of them having imprinted on each other.

The series also emphasises Clare is the more sexually aggressive of the pair and she “seduces” him but she also talks about how her sexual desires have been formed by his presence in her life since she was a child. That exchange was definitely a “ye gods” moment, one you can’t shake off.

Much like Henry’s affliction being a double-edged sword, The Time Traveller’s Wife is similarly tied to both the strength and weakness of Niffenegger’s book.

If you want the headiness of Clare and Henry’s sad love story, you have to also take the at-times creepy age gap.

The Time Traveller’s Wife is streaming now on Binge

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Originally published as The Time Traveller’s Wife TV series: Grand romance can’t escape the weird age gap