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've not read the books and there's certainly lots of unanswered questions in my mind!

I wholeheartedly recommend the books, they're amazing. How people are able to follow the story line without the knowledge from the books is a mystery. We're only 2 episodes in, and the person I was watching with was utterly confused by it all.

The whole concept and nuance of the daemon relationship is lost imo.

Definitely. They're treating them more like pets.

I thought the whole point of the bath scene in the book was that Mrs Coulter made Pan look away from Lyra, and it was the first time ever that that had happened, or that anybody had suggested that he should look away. That didn't really come across.

Her monkey was facing the wall, but Pan was still running around the bath.

@HopeClearwater - I'd be surprised if you get any examples, but I have a mate who is just like stardustandroses - complains about telly being too 'PC' or whatever, but whenever I press them on it, it always boils down to: too many black people for their liking. Utterly pathetic. (Especially in this case, as the great Clarke Peters is gracing the show!)

Agree with pp about the distance with their daemons. Fine, budget cuts, don’t always see them, maybe they’re in a sleeve, pocket or out of shot. But they are supposed to be very physical and intimate - so strange not to be hugging each other when lost in the doorway!

I meant the long shots of her alone in the bathroom after looking slightly wistful/pondering and then angry again when she catches herself. She is much more of a human being than the book suggested, I didn’t feel any of that until book 3.

I enjoyed episode 1 but I'm annoyed about episode 2.

I forget the vast majority of books I read but I have such vivid memories of how it felt to read The Northern Lights. I still remember the sense of mystery, fear and eventual shock when you realise - when Lyra realises - what's happening.

They've completely ruined it

(Also: I've forgotten exactly when she learns who her parents are in the book - isn't it right at the end? There's no way on earth Mrs Coulter would have told her anything!)

I'm still making my mind up about the casting. I think Lyra is quite well cast although she doesn't quite seem sharp/bright enough to me. I wasn't sure about Mrs Coulter after the first episode (she seemed too soft, "normal" and nice) but she can clearly do evil very well so fair enough!

Just watched episode 2.

I can’t get over how many electric lights and lamps there are everywhere! In the books I got the impression that anbaric lights were a bit of a novelty and not so much of an everyday occurrence.

I think the episode was very slow. Lyra seemed to distrust Mrs Coulter from very early on in the episode but it just ground to a bit of a halt. I felt she should have been ‘getting to know’ the alethiometer by now...

YY

Sorry to say the abducted children scenes were straight out of Oliver the musical

. I thought that too! I wish they had shown the children discussing their situation amongst themselves. I didn’t really get a sense of how they were all feeling and where they thought they were being taken and why.

I think Dafne Keen (?) relaxed into the role a bit more this week. Her acting was much better. I agree that the admiration of Mrs Coulter at the start didn’t come across that strongly.

I did NOT like the early reveal about her father, or the jumping across the worlds at this early stage. I was half expecting the camera to jump to Will in his house already.

I loved the flat too and was just right. Except for the high backed footballers wife padded headboard . Was a bit too boutique hotel rather than classic monied style.

I loved how the hallway looked and how Pan skidded along the marble floor. I loved the special effects of the daemon fight scene. Wonder how long that took to make?

I did not like the wishy washy journalist (although she was very beautiful!). No attempt to escape or shout for help. She just looked like the pathetic little woman getting into the car. I realise it was supposed to show the power of the Magisterium but still, she could have struggled physically slightly! Or her daemon could have been something stronger than a flimsy butterfly in a situation like that where she needed protecting.

Still enjoying it and this thread.

I found this article quite interesting about how much work is required to include the daemons:
www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2019-11-11/how-did-the-bbcs-his-dark-materials-bring-the-daemons-to-life/

It sounds like they tried to shoot a version with more daemons initially, but found the scenes to be too busy.

This was a big improvement from episode 2 but didn’t feel the benefit from the early reveals. Especially the identity of Lyra’s father. Dd and I are book readers and she was wondering why on Earth they had introduced our world already.
Dh (non book reader) on the other hand said he didn’t have a clue what was going on.
Half an hour later he comes back:
Dh: There’s a girl called Lyra, who’s very bad at hiding, er, it’s very Dusty, and when you kill someone’s pet they they die.

Me: It’s not a pet!!!

Why has Lycra got a ferret called Pam?

Me: It’s not a pet!!!

I suspect your DH isn't alone in thinking they're pets. They haven't exactly shown how important Daemons are.

I think I was asleep during the pet killing ...

I think part of the problem with the daemons is that the viewer has not really been ‘hit over the head’ with them speaking very often. We’ve heard Pan speaking with Lyra and Stelmaria with Asriel, but that’s about it. OTOH, we have heard daemons make ‘animal noises’ - the monkey and the master’s crow (and he didn’t say ‘corn’) being the examples I can name off the top of my head. I’ve heard very few daemons named and too many are silent. It downplays their importance.

At the moment casual viewers could very easily put them in the same category as Scabbers or Trevor.

It's been a while since I read the books, is it the case that the daemon's voice can only be heard by the person they are part of? Or can someone converse with the daemon of another person?

@GoFiguire - Pan isn't a ferret, he's a physical manifestation of Lyra's soul and can present as any animal because Lyra is a child. When she goes through puberty Pan will take a single permanent animal form for the duration of her adulthood. All humans in Lyra's world have this phenomenon, but the BBC don't appear to have the budget to properly demonstrate this.

UhareFouxisci I’ve not read the ‘original trilogy’ for 12 years but have read the latest two books recently, and daemons can definitely talk to other humans.

It's been a while since I read the books, is it the case that the daemon's voice can only be heard by the person they are part of? Or can someone converse with the daemon of another person?

Daemons can talk to other daemons and other people. They feel what their human feels and vice versa, and there's a certain degree of telepathy between them too (this is quite vague in the books, and I think it was swiftly dropped to be fair, because it raises more questions than it answers!).

When people meet, their daemons often have a quiet chat by themselves.

I DO like this tv series so far - but then I've just finished reading the books. They needed to do a lot more groundwork on the daemons in the first two episodes I think.

Pullman's writing was just sublime at how important he made the human-daemon relationship, to the point where as a reader you feel totally appalled by some of the later revelations!

The prioritisation of the visual on TV is a real problem for any adaptation of these books - the crucial concept, the total connectedness of human and daemon, is invisible and not amenable to filming.

What we get to look at, clothes and buildings and people, are all gorgeous - but the show just can’t deliver the one thing needed.

The article linked above is interesting on that -- apparently they did film scenes with far more daemons and daemon action in them, but at the edit thought it just didn't work dramatically, because the viewer's attention was too divided. And they decide to concentrate on Pan's most frequent forms, ermine and pine marten, rather than the distracting multiple changes he often does in the space of a minute in the novels.

Lord Boreal still just too beautiful. It’s a mystery to me why he wasn’t even a millionth so ... watchable in Doctors (?) or whatever else I’ve seen him in. He really, really suits his HDM wardrobe.

I love the way he's being played - smooth, suave, sophisticated, charming on the surface but can flick to utterly threatening in an instant. And the wardrobe (as he walked up the steps to the cut between worlds I could hear my Granny's voice going "you can tell a lot about a man from his shoes" ).

Mind you this could be because I'm reading Alex Rider to DS at the moment and Horowitz has this really annoying (and borderline disablist) habit of using ugliness/deformity to spell out "this is the bad guy."

I'd love to see Boreal as Dominic Medina in a TV adaptation of the Three Hostages (would also wind up the "it's PC gorn mad" lot a treat ).

That’s a great article, @superoz, thank you, it explains a lot.

I’ve read the 3 HDM trilogy a few times, but not the more recent books. I agree with a couple of PP who says they’re watching the series for its own sake rather than as a faithful adaptation of the books. Totally agree with someone who said that in the books they could never really pinpoint Asriel’s character or intention yet in the first couple of TV episodes he seems far less multidimensional iyswim.

One thing strikes me though is the amount of scene directions for “Mrs Coulter walks menacingly down a sinister corridor” they must have had . It’s pretty much all she seems to do.

I'm going to watch it all for what it is, and I agree it's always going to be hard to describe a psychological and emotional intertwining, quickly on the screen.

However I think they've turned the daemons into pets and sidestepped the whole central feature of that world, rather than giving it a better go. If they're changing things anyway, they could have put a bit of effort into that key element. Easier said than done, I am sure...

I think I was asleep during the pet killing ...

it wasn't really obvious Piggy, I wasn't sure if the butterfly daemon was dead, and it wasn't clear to me that the journalist was, either. I've forgotten what happens to her in the book. Odd daemon for an investigate journalist now I come to think of it - you might have expected it to have settled as a bloodhound?! If that fragile creature represented her soul she perhaps was not cut out for that career!

In the book she just gets thrown out I think, there's a bit about her gathering up her swooning daemon.

Although we don't know if an article ever appears I suppose!

Thanks village! I missed the journalist ,too ! definitely asleep