Petty guardian bollox about the new Harry Potter series...

[mids2019]

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/apr/25/may-the-force-be-with-you-how-to-save-every-tired-tv-superfranchise-from-star-wars-to-game-of-thrones

So Guardian a new Harry Potter series will be the first reboot of Harry Potter for 20 years for a new potential generation of Potter fans. Star Wars has had a vastly successful reboot in the 2000s despite the initial trilogy starting in the 70s. Star Trek has had numerous reboots alongside Marvel....all vastly successful franchises generating ££££s.

I think the new Harry Potter franchise is going to be an immense success bringing a new generation of young children into the fold with the CGI of the originals becomiǹg tired.

So this is just a petty dig from the Guardian despite a number of new actors being brought to the fore. Sad journalism feeling of the stench of sour grapes including the side bursting line...JKR now slytherin....oh the humour......

Well Luke Holland has missed what I think are all the good ways of improving those shows.

1. Don't piss on the original lore.
2. Concentrate on good stories and proper character development.
3. Don't use TV shows as an opportunity to preach your politics at the audience. No-one like being lectured at.
4. Don't call the audience racist or bigoted when your poorly written, lore breaking, lecturing TV show isn't popular.

I agree. As JKR wrote the original lore there may be ideas she hasn't put into the public domain that any add to the stories in general. It is much more difficult with Tolkien for instance when the author has passed.

It's a good chance to introduce a new skilled set of actors into the public imagination as I don't think the original cast were in reality that talented.

What was his advice on how to save Doctor Who?

DW is not mentioned. I don't know if that is becuse it is perfect in the eyes of Luke, or if he considers that it is beyond saving.

Archive version. https://archive.ph/yjTMp

I hope it is a huge success.

What are people's thoughts on the casting of Paapa Essiedu as Snape?

My gut reaction was not to care, JKR herself appears to be OK with it, and casting a black actress as Hermione in Cursed Child worked just fine.

But some people have said that if you make Snape black, it changes the dynamic of the relationship between him and James/Sirius/Lupin/Pettigrew and makes them look like racist bullies. I think they were bullies, but not racist ones. Thoughts?

Paapa Essiedu is far too handsome. I hope they don't uglify him in a really fake way though (anyone remember the fuss over Nicole Kidman's nose prosthetic in the Hours?).

I do think that they are going to have cast at least one (or more) black actor in the group that bullies Snape, or it absolutely will just look horrifically racist when he is hung upside down in the tree.

I agree. Do we know who will be cast as James / Lupin / Sirius? Perhaps they will get around it by casting that group as ethnically diverse and it will revert back to being just plain bullying rather than extreme racist bullying. Or perhaps they are just going to plonk a clunky race narrative in where it doesn't belong. He'd have been better cast as Sirius or Lupin. I can't imagine how they are going to make him look Snape-like?

A Black Sirius Black. Now that would have been funny. 😅

JKR's haters be like, "OMG can you believe she created a token black character and literally called him Sirius Black because she couldn't be bothered to think of a non stereotypical name for him, she's so effing racist I can't even!"

That's a pretty glaring omission! Doctor Who has been running for longer than Star Wars and Harry Potter, and the franchise is in worse shape than either of them. Some of the Star Wars spin-offs have crashed and burned horrendously, but a few others enjoyed a modicum of success. Doctor Who has been on a ratings slide for years. RTD was supposed to save the series, but it's hitting historic lows week on week now. It's all but guaranteed Disney will can it.

The Fantastic Beasts movies may have wavered, but Hogwarts Legacy was a runaway success, despite an attempted boycott, and if it wasn't for the furore over the casting of Snape, I think the HBO series would be getting a lot more positive buzz than it is.

Sirius Black can’t be black because then Bellatrix, Narcissa and a whole history of Black family members (who are mostly Voldemort supporters) will be black, and that’s probably worse for optics.

Lupin could be black.

Argh, I forgot about the tree part.

I think if they've got any sense they'll find a different way for the Marauders to bully him which doesn't have such unfortunate imagery.

Yes, good point.

So Lupin is really the only good candidate for a black Marauder.

And actually it could work really well with the whole werewolf thing. (Visually, in terms of the transformation, I mean.)

I'm not opposed to race-swapping characters, unless it fundamentally alters the audience perception of the story. Then I do think you can't do blind casting.

Some of the backlash to this casting is just racism. Some it arises from a kneejerk feeling that "Black Snape = DEI" and means the series will go the way of the new Doctor Who. But most of the criticism I've seen from fans of the series - the kind of people who don't just bash everything, they genuinely love all things Potter - seems to be coming from a place of concern.

This changes the story. It makes characters who were supposed to be classist into racists instead. James will look racist for sure, and many readers will be left wondering if Harry is too, when he has an instant distrust of Snape. Casting someone handsome as Snape also makes the audience more inclined to side with him, which we already saw with Alan Rickman. It's harder to hate him for bullying children, and live with Harry in that "is he a baddie or not?" headspace, if he's got a pretty face and the audience is already predisposed to check their biases.

The problem with Lupin was that he was a follower who didn't like that James and Sirius bullied Snape the way they did, but went along with it because he had his own secret to hide, which would have seen him ostracised from his peers if they discovered it.

If you have Black Snape and Black Lupin, and white bullies Sirius and James, that too creates a really unfortunate, unintended visual. James is still a racist, but now he's the I Can't Be Racist, I've Got A Black Friend, kind of racist

I really don't think making your marginalised werewolf character black is a good shout - he's poor and shabby and cast out because of what he is, treated with mistrust everywhere and filled with self loathing and shame. If people think James et al bullying a wannabe death eater at a time when Voldemort is killing muggleborns makes them look racist because the death eater happens to be black, then the same logic applies to the whole wizarding world being racist to Lupin and the way he has internalised being a werewolf becomes about his internalised racism. If anything, it detracts from his actual problem, while making everyone else look like the National Front.

Book Snape is a cunt. Harry doesn't like him because he is a horrible bully towards him - and that's OK, whatever colour Snape is. By the time we get to Snape's Worst memory we will have had five years of watching Snape be a cunt to the kids and will know he used to be a Death Eater. I think James is actually fine to use Snape's own spell to dangle him upside down within the context of a war on which they are on different sides (and James is on the good side).

I dont think Paapa Essiedu was a cynical, diversity hire. By all accounts he is a great actor, and Snape is an amazing role for him to take on and the opportunity of his career. I would hate to see any other cynical diversity casting to try and offset Snape now being black.

Just let him be black.

If the best person to audition for Sirius / Remus/ Peter is black/ Indian/ Chinese, so be it - give them the role. But they shouldn't be specifically looking to tokenise one of them just so that viewers feel more comfortable with them being shitty towards Snape.

They weren't racist in the book. They won't say or do anything racist in the TV show. Snape was a blood supremacist and they hated him. They were kids who treated him badly. It's up to viewers not to handwring and pretend it's something that it's not because they cast a black man as Snape.

It's like the butterfly effect. Casting Snape this way ripples out and changes so many other things by default.

All really good points.

@GwenogJones I think you are right, and your post sort of echoes what I've been feeling, which is that black people are not one dimensional, token characters, they can be good guys, they can be bad guys, they can be guys who are both good and bad at the same time, not everything has to be about racism.

They'll just have to be reeeeeally careful how they do it.

I'm not convinced by changing characters ethnicity etc especially as it reflected ethnic mix of most of the UK around 2000. why not have a new wizarding school being set up in Wolverhampton with a twenty first century ethnic mix. Relevant stories eg muggles have more wizarding equivalents through their phones so wizards lose interest in wizarding, wizards failing to save icecaps by magic, Muslim wizards struggling at school because they are fasting. School being an old factory and problems as muggles are going to convert it into flats. Asylum seeker wizards accidentally bringing in a djinn

If JK is happy with Snape being black so am I .. I trust her to make it work. I do think the concern about it splits into two camps, people who are downright racist and people who think it alters the perception of Snape. But I'm sure JK is all over it.

Can the showrunners handle it sensitively enough so that - especially for US viewers - the bullying does not have racist undertones?

I'm not sure that they can. I would love to be proved wrong.

There's no real reason why James can't be black and Harry mixed race is there?

I think that is a good suggestion.

Just let him be black.

It will be a relief if the directors do just let him be black. But the recent trend of shoehorning a social justice didactic message into everything has become predictably tiresome. Hopefully they will have learnt something from all the recent flops and go back to entertaining rather than preaching at their audience.

From a franchise point of view casting harry as mixed race, or blonde, or any other significant difference doesn't make much sense. It would be different in a smaller franchise, but every harry potter item (toys, lego, wall decals, bedding etc) whether cartoon or based on the film follow the same characterisation.