In an age when a ship's captain had no reliable way to know how far east or west he had sailed, one self-taught clockmaker spent decades trying to solve the problem with a machine.
What is Longitude about?
This mini-series follows John Harrison, a carpenter with no formal training in horology, as he sets out to build a clock precise enough to survive months at sea and still keep time well enough to calculate longitude. The scientific establishment of his day is convinced the answer lies in astronomy, not mechanics, and Harrison spends much of his life fighting for recognition as much as fighting the technical problem itself. The story runs in parallel with a second, later timeline following a naval officer who becomes fascinated with restoring Harrison's surviving instruments, tying the original struggle to how it was eventually understood and honored.
About the cast
Michael Gambon plays Harrison across decades of frustration and quiet persistence, while Jeremy Irons anchors the parallel restoration story. Gemma Jones and Anna Chancellor round out a cast built for a character-driven historical drama rather than spectacle.
Context & significance
Directed by Charles Sturridge and based on Dava Sobel's book of the same name, Longitude is a British-American mini-series from 2000 set against the real navigational crisis that plagued 18th-century sea travel. It's a period piece about scientific stubbornness as much as invention, told with the patience a decades-long dispute deserves.
Watching Longitude on Ktime
Longitude is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, making a dialogue-heavy historical drama like this easy to follow for a Farsi-speaking audience. A K-Time account is needed to watch, though the title's page can be browsed without signing in first. For a story built on technical explanation and courtroom-style argument, the Persian dub carries the detail without demanding constant reading.