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The Watch (Discworld TV series)

Started by Hemulen, March 02, 2018, 11:44:13 AM

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Mister Six

Vetinari could well be a woman (and Anna Chancellor would be perfect, so well done casting directors), but Dibbler should be a bloke. Ideally played by Andy Linden, who played a similar sort in the Harry Potter films.


Ferris

Quote from: Mister Six on January 17, 2020, 01:42:36 PM
Direct link here. Carrot looks good. Electricity questionable though. Is the hardnut looking fella supposed to be Vimes? If so, I'm not so sure of that.

https://twitter.com/dwmoook/status/1218065788143316992?s=09

Looks like a mediocre episode of Doctor Who. Will avoid.

Kryton

Any mention of the others Nobby and Colon and the gang?

The watch stuff is arguably the most 'human' of the whole series in my opinion and has the best stories (Night watch is fucking brilliant) and generally more grounded in realism (well besides the vampires, dwarves and trolls) - colour me intrigued at the very least.

As others have said though I've not been impressed by any of the animated/live stuff as it loses a lot of the intricacies of the prose and the author.

I hope it's good though.

king_tubby

No Nobby, Colon or Detritus in the cast list.

CMOT Dibbler is apparently the leader of a criminal gang though.

And a lass.

Kryton

Dibbler is great - But I'm not going to watch this as I believe Colon and Nobby are a great duo and removing them is fucking bullshit.
There I've said it.

Nobby reminds me of an old customer I used to serve in a pub. Always smoking a foul brand of tobacco rollies. Slightly shady, but always knew what horse to bet on and always seemed to talk from the side of his mouth.

Mister Six

Yeah, Nobby and Colon are really solid characters and not including them is just baffling.

As is Dibbler leading a gang. He's a dodgy sort but he's not a criminal ringleader.

Kryton

Quote from: Mister Six on January 18, 2020, 07:13:10 PM
Yeah, Nobby and Colon are really solid characters and not including them is just baffling.

As is Dibbler leading a gang. He's a dodgy sort but he's not a criminal ringleader.

They're an essential core-part of Vimes's philosophies of having at least one or two shadier members of the watch. Nobby being a rat-like, inquisitive criminal type and Colon being the brown-nosing polished brass type that respects rank but is slightly underhanded. Both essentially GOOD at heart though.

As you say, baffling.

I mean Carrot is alright but he's just basically the slightly thick good-hearted type. Lawful good. Boring.


MojoJojo

Quote from: Catalogue Trousers on January 17, 2020, 11:29:47 PM
Latest casting details have Vetinari and Dibbler being gender-swapped for no good reason at all. It's hardly as if Discworld is short of strong female characters, is it? To me, this is feeling more and more like it might make those Sky TV co-productions look astoundingly good. Fuck's sake.

https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/discworld-watch-tv-vetinari-casting/?fbclid=IwAR2meZeUUCiYDCq0p-FTJZpTzX7nKJQaVe8Og3Dx8UF63yPsUzz1FU-Ec6k

Discworld overall is OK for female characters, but I don't think the City Watch stories do. Angua's character is werewolf and love interest for carrot, and nothing else. Then there's Cheery... and I think that's it.

Catalogue Trousers

Lady Sybil's pretty formidable in the books. And she's involved with Vimes and the Watch from their first appearance.

Mister Six

Aye but she's only really a supporting character, and her primary role is to be Vimes' love interest. Angua gets some meaty stuff to deal with - no pun intended - in The Fifth Elephant though.

(Regardless, rogue vigilante Lady Sybil is all so horribly wrong...)

I wonder if they're restricted to just those characters originating in the Watch books (and Vetinari)? You could get the journalist character from The Truth - she'd work well. And Susan, but perhaps she comes with too much baggage.

MojoJojo

Dibbler being a woman does seem a bit odd though, but from the sounds of it they've changed the character so much they're Dibbler in Name Only.

backdrifter

Very odd decision.

They have given up on a high comedic value (and very Ankh Morporky) side character just so that a completely new character can use the name.

MojoJojo

My interpretation of it is, they're mostly taking the setting, and the characters are only very loosely based upon the books. That might make sense, as the characters are very cartoonish.

Mister Six

Well Nobby and Colon are. Like almost all of Pratchett's core characters, though, Carrot, Angua, Sybil and (especially) Vimes have plenty of layers.

Anyway, the answer is to add detail within the broad brush strokes, not throw away the canvas and draw it from memory with a felt tip.

Glyn

Guess this is confirmation that the estate want a very different version of the discworld  :

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/28/terry-pratchett-novels-faithful-tv-adaptation-discworld

It's only an initial press release but I'm not convinced that a 100% faithful approach is needed again  . As much as the cyberpunk visuals look a bit odd ,both the David Jason and Good Omens adaptations suffered from sticking too strictly to the source material. Perhaps Rhianna Pratchett can navigate that better though.

Alberon

Novels and television are two very different things, of course, and Discworld has proven difficult to adapt in the past.

The Sky adaptations improved as they went along, but that might partly be because they chose the wrong books to do at the start; Hogfather and then back to the very start when the books were just fantasy parodies. I thought their version of Going Postal was very good.

king_tubby

I'm guessing they mean steampunk rather than cyberpunk. And it was more the changes to the characters than the visuals that annoyed people.

Mister Six

If it wasn't for the odd aesthetic and the decision to pointlessly change characters like Sybil, I'd say The Watch stands a much better chance of working than any direct adaptation of a specific book. So much of Pratchett's humour is in the narration, or in written elements like puns or characters' names, that the best thing to do is to take the tone, world and spirit of the books, and get someone very talented to write scripts within those boundaries.

king_tubby


Ferris

Quote from: king_tubby on October 09, 2020, 09:40:36 PM
Fucking hell

https://twitter.com/TheWatch/status/1314622278844510208

I've often felt one of the predominant character weakness of Sam Vimes (as written) is that he doesn't play enough guitar in a shonky literal steam-punk band, so naturally I'm delighted to see this remedied.

Christ.


Glyn

Blimey , I did wonder if the Pratchett estate were just being a bit precious but thats a shocker. I didn't think he was bad casting for Vimes but is he playing him as an acid casualty ?

kin'hell is that supposed to be Carrot,Angua and Cheery at the end too ? Where do you start with that ?

Ferris

Don't worry about it lads just a cornerstone of my childhood listen shit wherever you like go on have a great liquid superturd all over and please do not hold back FULL GAS

Phil_A

So Vimes is basically Super Hans now?

Zetetic

There's as little chance that I'll watch this as there was the anaemic Sky1 Terry Pratchett's guff, but I'm far less disappointed by this existing.

Better something that feels like a failed experiment, however catastrophic, then a carelessly wasted opportunity.

Alberon

Suddenly Star Trek Discovery doesn't seem so bad.

Not my discworld.

Alberon

Just had a look at the show's twitter feed. They've posted several clips and the replies are literally 98% negative.

They've one of not-Vimes meeting not-Death. Just 40 or so seconds long and it still amply shows how they've fucked it up. And the eye lights in the hood look pretty shit.

Phil_A

Quote from: Zetetic on October 09, 2020, 11:19:18 PM
There's as little chance that I'll watch this as there was the anaemic Sky1 Terry Pratchett's guff, but I'm far less disappointed by this existing.

Better something that feels like a failed experiment, however catastrophic, then a carelessly wasted opportunity.

It is a carelessly wasted opportunity though, to do something good with these characters and setting. The fact this is the end result of years in development makes it feel even more of a crushing disappointment, that they couldn't come up with anything better than this misjudged shite.

Mister Six

Quote from: Alberon on October 09, 2020, 11:42:22 PM
Just had a look at the show's twitter feed. They've posted several clips and the replies are literally 98% negative.

They've one of not-Vimes meeting not-Death. Just 40 or so seconds long and it still amply shows how they've fucked it up. And the eye lights in the hood look pretty shit.

Death played by Bunk from The Wire!

So others don't have to bother looking it up: https://twitter.com/TheWatch/status/1314617651042365440?s=09