Ted Danson stars as Dr. Lemuel Gulliver, an 18th-century Englishman who is recounting his fantastical travels to people he meets back in England: the island of tiny people Liliput; the land of the giants Brobdingnag; the floating castle Laputa; the immortal Struldbrugs; and the intelligent Houyhnhnm horses. His wife Mary (Mary Steenburgen) becomes concerned about his mental state, their young son Tom (Tom Sturridge) believes his father's tales, and his rival Dr. Bates (James Fox) tries to take advantage of the situation by committing Dr. Gulliver to an asylum.
Other actors involved include Peter O'Toole as the Emperor of Liliput, Alfre Woodard as the Queen of Brobdingnag, and John Gielgud as the Professor of Sunlight.
The series is notable for using flashbacks to portray the travels. It is also the rare Gulliver's Travels adaptation to feature all the voyages.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: Gulliver's son proves that his father's tales are real, giving him his freedom, and he is last seen leaving the court happily in the company of his family. In the book he didn't have to prove his sanity or the veracity of his claims, but he became detached from his wife and children, whom he had come to see as Yahoos, and preferred the company of horses.
- Adaptational Heroism: The Brobdingnagians are much more enlightened than they are in the original; they are implied to be completely free of racism and sexism, since their rulers are black and the Queen has as much authority as the King, and said rulers act like philosopher-kings instead of abusing their power. In the book, it is made very clear that Brobdingnag has all of England’s flaws except war, hinting that the latter is only absent because it is isolated from all other countries. The courtiers are flighty and ignorant, and the court dwarf is treated like shit because of his deformity, not to mention the extreme poverty in the city. The miniseries removes this to the point that the Brobdingnagians’ horror at gunpowder seems like moral conviction instead of Gulliver not realizing that scaling up a magazine by a factor of 12 would be potentially catastrophic.
- Adaptational Modesty: As expected for TV, the Yahoos wear crude loincloths and bikinis instead of walking around naked like beasts. In the same chapter, the female Yahoo's attack on Gulliver while Skinny Dipping is delayed until he makes it to the shore and puts on his breeches first.
- Adaptational Villainy: Dr Bates gets only a cursory mention in the book; in the mini-series he has Gulliver committed to an insane asylum so that he can marry Gulliver's wife.
- Adaptation Distillation: In the novel, Gulliver returns to England at the end of each voyage. In the miniseries, he is gone for nine years and only returns home at the end of his final voyage.
- Age Lift:
- The original Gulliver was about 38 at the beginning of the first travel and 54 at the end of the novel. In the movie he appears to be still in his 30s by the end (i.e. Ted Danson's age at the time of filming), with a 10 year old son as his only child.
- In the novel, the Emperor of Lilliput is "twenty-eight years and three-quarters old." In the miniseries, he is in his sixties at least.
- In the novel Gulliver estimates that the female Yahoo who tries to rape him is not older than 11. In the miniseries, she is changed to two adult women.
- Bedlam House: The original Bedlam House, no less as Gulliver has been committed there due his bizarre tales of his travels.
- Composite Character:
- All of Gulliver's children are replaced by a single son named Tom.
- The Brobdingnagian King's role is given to the Queen.
- While in Houyhnhnmland Gulliver almost only interacts with his "mistress", the mare that finds him upon his arrival. In the book he is taken in by a horse he calls his master, and tours the country with one of the horse's servant mares.
- Evil Doppelgänger: Gulliver finds his duplicate in the Room of Answers, who not only does not help him, but mocks him saying that Gulliver may be presently unable return home because he actually doesn't want to.
- Framing Device: In this version, Gulliver revives and relays his travels as he is suspected, examined, and committed for being assumed insane.
- Gender Flip: The Brobdingnagian king is replaced with the Queen, and Gulliver's Houyhnhnm master is now a mistress.
- Gray Rain of Depression: Rain pours after Gulliver is ruled to be a Yahoo by the Houyhnhnm Council and sentenced to be with the Yahoos before leaving the island with the new moon.
- Happily Married: Gulliver and his wife Mary remain a loving couple, as opposed to the novel, where Gulliver is unable to fit in with normal people at the end.
- Important Haircut: Gulliver's hair is cut short when he is put in an isolation cell after he attacks Dr. Bates.
- In Name Only: The Struldbruggs in the miniseries bear little resemblance to the book besides the name and the fact that they're immortal. They're not born that way; instead, they drink from a Fountain of Youth which makes them superficially immortal, but can't protect their bodies from failing over time and their eyes from clouding over as their insides suffer the same Age Without Youth as their book counterparts (although they consider this a small price to pay for never dying, and try unsuccessfully to convince Gulliver of this).
- Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Ted Danson doesn't try to put on an English accent except for a moment or two, even though Gulliver is an Englishman, and mostly just sounds American. (which actually makes it an Accidentally-Correct Writing; in the 18th century when the book was written, the "English accent" sounded a lot closer to what we would consider an American accent.)
- Oven Logic: Gulliver tries to be a One-Man Industrial Revolution in Brobdingnag by teaching the King the secrets of gunpowder. So he has a powder keg filled up that is scaled to Brobdingnagian size (meaning it holds 1728 times as much as normal). ...Yeah, he’s really lucky that didn’t straight-up kill him. The explosion makes the King call the English “an odious race”.
- Real After All: Almost everyone who hears Gulliver's stories after his return to England thinks that he is insane, but he is proven right after his son shows them a Liliputian sheep.
- Related in the Adaptation: General Limtoc and Admiral Bolgolam are the Emperor of Lilliput's sons in the miniseries.
- Thrown Down a Well: The isolation cell at the Bedlam House is a downplayed version of this, having its entrance at the top and allowing people to safely watch and talk to Gulliver from there.
- Truer to the Text: Despite its deviations, the miniseries is held as the truest adaptation of Swift's novel, featuring all travels and not bowdlerizing them into a children's tale.
- You Have to Believe Me!: Gulliver tries to convince people his experiences were real, but comes off quite deranged since they're incredibly bizarre and he suffers from very frequent traumatic flashbacks which make him seem like he's just hallucinating it all. His son Tom eventually finds the tiny sheep from Lilliput which he brought, proving it was real.
