Excellent Adventures: The Time Travel Movie Podcast
Three friends, Ellen, James and Paul, explore the hows and whens of time travel in the movies.
Episodes
This episode, Paul Hosts & invites Ellen & James to a mini quiz on the cinema of the Summer of 1989. With the picture painted, it’s a race against Time to stop a devil of a scheme to undo creation itself.
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Our Christmas special two-parter takes a festive leap through time (and film history) as we each pick our favourite Christmas Carol adaptation. Obviously, the correct choice is The Muppet Christmas Carol - which I selected, of course! Michael Caine delivers a perfectly straight-faced Scrooge performance amid singing frogs and bantering ghosts, but it’s Gonzo (as Charles Dickens) who truly steals the show. Narrating the story with u...
This week, Ellen is joined by Jen Francis - a freelance TV producer and writer whose work spans original scripts, television development and sharp-eyed film criticism. Jen is also the author of Steve McQueen: In The Scene (2025), a new non-fiction study of the director’s craft.
...A visually arresting adaptation of the poem ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ , David Lowery’s film is fascinating. It’s a Christmas movie , for sure, and it includes a time travel thread in the tapestry of its tale. What more could you ask for? Inventive, and imbued with a tangible sense of magic, the film prompts an enthusiastic conversation between James and Ellen for this episode.
James and Paul are MIA, but Ellen is forging ahead solo into the wonderfully absurd world of Hallmark Time Travel Movies. From pocket watches that open wormholes to Victorian men horrified by toasters, she breaks down the rules, the romance, and the time-bending tropes that make this subgenre so irresistibly unhinged.
Buckle up—time travel waits for no one!
Time travel, medieval mayhem, and a crooning Yankee - what more could you want? Ellen, Paul, and James dive into A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949) and its literary origins in Mark Twain’s groundbreaking novel.
Join them as they explore the surprising legacy of this ...
Recorded over a 13 month period - the Excellent Adventurers are proud to present a chat with possibly the only person left on the planet who had not seen the Back to the Future trilogy - Ellen's Mum!
Paul captures the initial & eventual reactions to Parts I & III, while Ellen gets the complicated one in the middle with II!
The Time Travelling Trio return to the third in the trilogy for the second time. Huh?
Episode 14 was a Mini Excellent Adventure with guest Nigel Smith, who pipped for this as a favourite to chat about.
James & Paul felt left out, so promised Ellen she could do an episode about Hallmark movies, & so this grand revisit came about. In so many ways, the romance with Christopher Lloyd & Mary Steenbergen is just a big tease f...
Paul's been wanting to explore David Lynch's twisty Noir nightmare with a like-minded admirer for ages. Is it Time Travel or Not? Paul asked this at a screening of the movie in 2024 at the Worthing Connaught - & is here joined by Film Manager of the cinema James Tully, to definitively put to bed & answer all mysteries of the film. I mean, how hard can it be?
Find the Worthing Connaught here: https://wtm.uk/
Ellen, James & Paul explore "the Feels" within this charming Time Loop Romedy.
Kyle Allen & Kathryn Newton are living the same day over & are actually pretty happy about it. Then they start to question if there is a reason, & what would happen if they made a map of their findings.
Sweet. Uplifting. Great to look at.
But enough about us - you should see the movie too.
Join Ellen and special guest Jamie Dyer, founder of Old Time Review and host of The Quo-Cast and Vintage Animation Millennial, as they embark on a mini excellent adventure through the classic 1960 film The Time Machine, directed by George Pal.
In this episode, Ellen and Jamie delve into a broad discussion of the film’s enduring appeal, from its imaginative take on time travel to Pal’s pioneering stop-frame animation. They also take...
This Czech comedy-drama by Director Jindřich Polák had Ellen & Paul in giggling fits, what with a parrot squawking "Heil Hitler," a funky score & a tight script that really knew how to play with the fun of looping over & over your own Timeline.
Join them to find out what the Nazi plan involving a nuclear bomb was all about & how a circus family with a trampoline & skeleton-eating washing-up liquid get involved...
Paul finally gets off his chest a decades-long theory about Kubrick's classic, & finds all new aspects of the film to (maybe) support it.
This kicks off a l'il sideline of episodes in which he poses the question: Is it Time Travel or Not? There will be more. As with all such things, it's just a matter of making the time!
James & Paul storm the beach with Tom Cruise & Emily Blunt for this fantastic sci-fi action movie. It features one of the most intriguing reasons for Time Travel as plot device, which Paul traces back to the the Japanese light novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.
It's an unusual role for Cruise, scripted by multiple-movie collaborator Christopher McQuarrie.
11 years later. Where have movies like this gone?
Paul puts his trainers back on for this Indian Hindi-language comedy-thriller film directed by Aakash Bhatia. It's an official adaptation of the award-winning German film Run Lola Run by Tom Tykwer, and stars Taapsee Pannu and Tahir Raj Bhasin in the lead roles.
The gang learn some choice German words from this dazzling - & surprisingly short - fast-paced drama from director Tom Tykwer. The movie put Franke Potente on the movie map & made everyone wanna go jogging.*
*Last part may not be true.
For this mini adventure episode, James has a conversation with director Chris Reading about his new movie, Time Travel Is Dangerous. Their conversation takes in the delights of the time travel genre, the ways in which the movie developed and the challenges involved in bringing it to the screen. Time Travel Is Dangerous had its big screen release in the UK and Ireland in March 2025 and is scheduled for screenings in America this spr...
The trio all know a good Sandra Bullock Time Travel movie when they see it. Which raises some discussion about this tragic tale of a wife living a week of days out of chronological order. The real tragedy being that one day her husband is alive. The next he's not. Then he is again. And so on. Sort of.
Featuring Ellen's all-time favourite trope of the surprise-house-gift, this was a fun one to record!
Paul dissects another in the teen-girl-sent-back-in-time-to-stop-serial-killer sub-genre, linking back to episode 24, about It's a Wonderful Knife. The pitch of Scream meets Back to the Future is already feeling a little tired, but these aren't likely to disappear any time soon.
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