Gulliver's Travels (TV miniseries)

Gulliver's Travels
DVD cover (special edition)
Based on	Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
Written by	Simon Moore
Directed by	Charles Sturridge
Starring	Ted Danson Mary Steenburgen James Fox Omar Sharif Peter O'Toole Alfre Woodard Kristin Scott Thomas John Gielgud
Voices of	Isabelle Huppert
Narrated by	Ted Danson
Composer(s)	Trevor Jones
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of episodes	2
Production
Executive producer(s)	Robert Halmi Sr. Brian Henson
Producer(s)	Duncan Kenworthy
Location(s)	England Portugal
Running time	186 minutes
Release
Original network	NBC
Original release	February 4 – 5, 1996

Gulliver's Travels is a U.S. TV miniseries based on Jonathan Swift's novel of the same name, produced by Jim Henson Productions and Hallmark Entertainment. This miniseries is notable for being one of the very few adaptations of Swift's novel to feature all four voyages. The miniseries aired in the United Kingdom on Channel 4, and in the US on NBC in February 1996. The miniseries stars Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, Peter O'Toole, John Gielgud, Omar Sharif, Isabelle Huppert, Geraldine Chaplin, Shashi Kapoor, Warwick Davis, Kristin Scott Thomas, Alfre Woodard, Kate Maberly, Tom Sturridge, Richard Wilson and Nicholas Lyndhurst. It was shot in England and Portugal.

The series won five Emmy Awards including in the Outstanding Miniseries category.

In this version, Dr. Gulliver has returned to his family after a long absence. The action shifts back and forth between flashbacks of his travels and the present where he is telling the story of his travels and has been committed to an insane asylum (The flashback framework and the incarceration in the asylum are not in the novel). While the miniseries remains faithful to the novel, the ending has been changed for a more upbeat conclusion. In the book, Gulliver is so impressed with the Utopian country of the Houyhnhnms that when he returns to England he eventually chooses to live out his life among the horses in his barn, rather than with his family. In the miniseries, he recovers from this obsession and returns to his wife and child.