His Dark Materials

[AllGoodDogs]

New BBC adaptation, looks so good, can't wait trailer here -

m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10162256439035553&id=683285552&sfnsn=mo

I record things on my sky q box- what’s strange about that? A lot of downloaded programmes don’t have subtitles. @SurpriseSparDay

I was disappointed. The casting of Mrs Coulter (patrticularly) and Lord Asriel were just not believable. IMO Nicole Kidman was the epitome of Mrs Coulter - icy cold and definitely suspect- and Daniel Craig a better Asriel - more aloof. That is despite the overall quality of the film.

The film version wasnt great but I think the casting was better. Daniel Craig was a good Asriel and Nicole Kidman a terrifyingly beautiful Mrs Coulter, with an equally terrifying daemon. Ma Costa is all wrong in the series too.
Im not really impressed so far

I enjoyed it but think Asriel and Ma Costa were wrong. I'd have liked Richard Armitage and Pam Ferris in the roles. I'll defer judgement on Mrs C until. see whether she can do chilling. Keeley Hawes would have been good, I think.

Looking forward to the Armoured Bears - Iorek Byrnison is my all-time favourite non-human crush.

Oh, and Lin-Manuel is definitely no Lee Scoresby - Sam Elliott was perfect in the role!

I watched with my dd who's in y4, we both enjoyed it and dd got the gist of what was happening. She hasn't read the books but I have and really enjoyed them. I want dd to read the books but agree they're "too long" so I've preorderd the bbc audio book from amazon. I'm hoping she'll enjoy that!

@BoreOfWhabylon yes pam ferris is who I pictured as ma Costa when I read the books!

Aren’t people imagining Pam Ferris as Ma Costa because she played another famous Ma - the one from The Darling Buds of May?

I get Mrs Weasley when I think of Ma Costa.

People still record things???
Some of us have lives too busy to watch it all live. There's very little we watch live I'm fact. Set top box rocks

I read the books when they were first published and loved them, but the first episode of this adaptation was very disappointing.

It suffers from the BBC drama disease where everything feels slightly inauthentic somehow. As far as I can remember, the Gyptains in the books were a very distinct culture with overtones of old Roma beliefs. In this show, they are just the "noble poor" on boats.

Again, the world of HDM was very much a world of adults, with Lyra seeing events through a mistaken child's eyes. This show sets her up as a kind of Harry Potter character, and that grates on me. The books portray the idea that Lyra can do what she does because she slips through the net of notice because she is a child and adults largely ignore her.

Also the magisterium scenes feel a bit Star Wars, and I never got that impression from the book at all. The world is far more steam punky than the show conveys.

Some of us have lives too busy to watch it all live.

It’s on iPlayer, you don’t need to watch it live or record it!

It’s on iPlayer, you don’t need to watch it live or record it! but the whole point of the set top box is it records stuff so it's there to remind me there's new episodes on, it automatically records every episode and will record the new series, it automatically records anything with David Attenborough in it etc, that's less effort than iPlayer

Why are people so bemused by people recording things??

As previously mentioned, our internet can be sticky and the iplayer buffers or drops out frequently, it's much easier to just record it on the digibox and then delete it afterwards.

Its on iPlayer, you don’t need to watch it live or record it
Clearly you have super duper WiFi. IPlayer is a lottery in our house, with lagging, crashing...if we want to watch something without throwing the remote at the screen we record it.

In face I am watching Name of the Rose on iPlayer right now and have a lovely circle spinning around the screen.

I’m not bemused by people recording things, I was bemused by the suggestion that if you didn’t record things you were a no-life sadarse with nothing to do but watch all your TV shows live.

All I was pointing out was that other options are available.

In fact...not face

I have an actual DM qn that DH can't answer

When a baby is born from where does the daemon appear?

This was from a webchat with PP:
Q: Are daemons born at the same time as their humans, or do they somehow appear later on?

Philip Pullman:
A: This is a difficult one, because I've never had to think about it. I've never had to talk about how daemons come into being because I didn't write a scene in which a human character was being born. The gynaecology of daemons is a closed book to me. What I do know is about how they get their names: the parents' daemons choose the name of the child's daemon.

Always good when your author doesn't think through his story lines!!

This is actually pretty much DH had said, about no babies being born in the books.

Now I need to convince myself of a reasonable answer.

I quite like the idea that he doesn’t know the answer.

I don’t need an answer on how daemons come in to being, I am happy to accept that in this story, at this particular time, they just exist. I think over explanation of them destroys a little bit of their mystery (and this is the exact explanation given for why Joker has no definitive origin story. The mystery is the intriguing detail)

Oh yes to Sam Elliot. Lin Manuel Miranda has a lot to live up to. Lee and Hester are two of my favourite characters in literature.

If I hadn't loved the books I'm not sure I would continue with this, but as I know what's going to happen I'll stick with it.

I did keep saying about the lack of daemons. Those servants should each have had a dog at their heels.

Oh see I like authors who know their universe inside out