TV SERIES · 1996– · UK
Gulliver's Travels
13 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (13)
- #001
This is the only screen version to adapt all four parts of Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel "Gulliver's Travels."
- #002
Lemuel and Mary Gulliver were played by the married couple Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen. It was the first project in which both starred after their marriage in 1995.
- #003
James Fox (Dr. Bates) and Edward Fox (General Limtoc) are brothers, and their former sister-in-law Celestia Fox was the miniseries' casting director.
- #004
Although Peter O'Toole played the father of John Standing and Edward Fox, in real life he was only two years older than Standing and five years older than Fox.
- #005
Footage of Gulliver's ship, the flying island of Laputa and Gulliver's arrival on Laputa was later reused in Crayola Kids Adventures: Tales of Gulliver's Travels (1997), which was also produced by Hallmark Entertainment.
- #006
Tom Sturridge (Tom Gulliver) is the son of director Charles Sturridge and Phoebe Nicholls (the Empress of Lilliput).
- #007
The flashback framing and the confinement in the asylum are not in the novel. Although the miniseries stays faithful to the novel, the ending was changed to reach a more optimistic conclusion. In the book, Gulliver is so taken with the utopian land of the Houyhnhnms that, on returning to England, he chooses to spend his life among the horses in his stable rather than with his family. In the miniseries he overcomes this obsession and returns to his wife and child.
- #008
In the United Kingdom the miniseries was repeated as part of The English Programme, a long-running educational series for schools and colleges. It was divided into four 45-minute episodes and first aired in mid-1997 as part of Channel 4 Schools' programming strand.
- #009
Finding financial backing for the miniseries took years. The estimated budget was $27,000,000. The project required a great deal of special effects work. Producer Duncan Kenworthy said, "This [Gulliver's Travels] was something I was developing while Jim was alive… We wanted to do the whole book, and that was what interested Jim." Jim Henson's Creature Shop created a few CGI wasps and some prosthetic makeup for the Yahoos.
- #010
Peter O'Toole, Phoebe Nicholls and Tom Sturridge also appeared in FairyTale: A True Story (1997), likewise directed by Charles Sturridge.
- #011
This miniseries (known in some markets as Ted Danson's Gulliver's Travels) is an American-British TV miniseries produced by Jim Henson Productions and Hallmark Entertainment, based on Jonathan Swift's 1726 satirical novel of the same name. The miniseries is notable for being one of the few adaptations to include all four voyages of Swift's novel. It aired in February 1996 on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom and on NBC in the United States.
- #012
During his short career as an actor, director Charles Sturridge played the young Prince Albert of Wales (the future King Edward VII) in Edward the King (1975), in which Robert Hardy played his father Prince Albert and John Gielgud played Benjamin Disraeli.
- #013
Peter O'Toole and Graham Crowden had previously appeared together in The Ruling Class (1972).
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