Main Menu

Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 11:28:27 PM

Login with username, password and session length

His Dark Materials (BBC)

Started by kalowski, July 20, 2019, 09:35:24 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

kalowski

Disagree, guys. Very true to the story and excellent casting. Seemed to make the characters real. Lyra was especially brilliant. Perhaps it makes a difference having read the book.

Butchers Blind

That dragged for me.  As an opening it didn't really do much in setting pieces in play and the pacing was slow.  Felt like a below par episode of Doctor Who.

Ja'moke

It was a lot of table-setting (which is sadly the case for the first couple of episodes) and not a lot of excitement. You don't really get a sense of how this universe works yet nor how expansive it is because of the majority of the action taking place in a school in Oxford. Hopefully that will change as it moves forward.

The positives are that Dafne Keen is really good as Lyra and if the material can eventually match her performance then we're in for some fun. Ruth Wilson as Mrs. Coulter showed a lot of promise too. And it does seem to be open to tackling some of the theological questions which were completely absent from The Golden Compass adaptation.

So yeah, slow start, but small signs of promise.

Thursday

I feel like in some ways it was pushing along too quickly and other things were taking too long. Probably going to be a bit alienating for non-book readers, you don't get much sense of Lyra though because there's not enough interiority to build that connection yet.

It's promising though, the tone of it feels right, it was more to do with structural and pacing issues letting it down that are hopefully ironed out when the cast and world is established. Feel like 8 episodes might still be a bit short though. 

touchingcloth

I enjoyed it a lot, it felt extremely similar to my memories of reading the book for the first time, but I can see how it would be alienating for people who haven't read the book because there are so many characters and plot points to set up. I liked Coulter most of the cast, saved thought it was subtle how they worked in the point about daemons not being fixed for children, although that said the adaptation is in danger of making daemons seem like hangers on rather than integral parts of people. Five episodes or so to address that in if they want the whole cutting scenario to land.

Things I'm excited for are watching Lycra's relationship with the Gyptians develop, and seeing some evil monkey shit. That monkey is a great villain, though it's a slight shame it's not a touch more golden. 

Ballad of Ballard Berkley


BlodwynPig


Urinal Cake

I've learnt of Mulefa so I would like this to succeed.

BlodwynPig

Its not a football team. The bbc have thrown big money at it so it will be a success, glossing over its massive failings.

timebug

Tried and failed to read the first book, many years back. Couldn't get on with it, it just failed to ignite any interest in me. Tried to watch Episode One last night. Same result. Bailed after fifteen minutes or so, and read my current good book!
(I will admit to a personal bias, in that I don't like James McAvoy in anything. A very one-note actor I.M.O!)

Chollis

Oh for fuck's sake I was about to watch this until you mentioned McAvoy, guy's a wanker!

Had similar experience to others reading the books as a young lad, enjoyed the first one but lost interest with Subtle Knife. I remember feeling that I should really be enjoying them a lot more, because that kind of fantasy was right up my street. The praise in this thread is tempting me to read them again now that I'm older and wiser.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

QuoteFeel like 8 episodes might still be a bit short though

If they can't do it in 8 episodes they want shooting

Only with a water pistol though

BlodwynPig

do you think the BBC will ever return to making proper adult drama again (e.g. box of delights) instead of this incessant obsession with hybrid adulchild/chadult muck.

poo

prefer stuff with knobs going in and out

madhair60


BlodwynPig


madhair60


Dex Sawash


BlodwynPig

Quote from: poo on November 04, 2019, 12:50:53 PM
prefer stuff with knobs going in and out

Have you seen BBC Sex scenes. Two Lib Dem councillors grasping at badly lit pork chops whilst moaning like beached vagabonds on a chilly Norfolk beach

Pink Gregory

Only complaint I have is the painfully generic score.  But I only read the books this year so I'm kind of in it for the casting at the minute.  It's a great John Faa; not sort of tall and wild-man like, but *imposing*.

Also I felt like Asriel at first, in the book, is a bit more of a cold, detache bastard, and his sneaking affection for Lyra only comes through later; it felt off somehow to have a few of those moments early on.

Also the exposition text at the beginning was weird, but I suppose I'd rather that than 'as you know, the Magisterium...'

olliebean

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on November 03, 2019, 08:13:25 PM
Just watched episode one, and it's a boring, muddled, sterile waste of time. I haven't read the books, but you can tell that Jack Thorne adapted them in a state of panic. He spends most of episode one struggling to establish this world and its mythology, so much so that you never have time to breathe and get to know or care about these characters. Very poor.

I haven't read them either, but Lawrence Miles did what I presume is a good comparison: https://twitter.com/Lawrence_Miles/status/1191163827339120640

I already knew it was going to be a load of wank as soon as that caption he's screencapped appeared.

BlodwynPig

BBC - 'ravishing praise from critics'...with each dramatic iteration, the adjectives get more and more middle class.

Pink Gregory

I found it odd that it really skirts over the rivalry (or indeed any interaction) between the college and the Gyptian kids.  Of all the things to excise for time that's quite important isn't it?

JesusAndYourBush

I've not read the book, and after watching the first episode last night I was totally confused about the talking animals.
Everyone has to have a talking animal accompany them?   Or people turn into an animal when they're older, or something?  Not a clue mate.  That totally baffled me and just made the whole thing seem silly.  (I'm guessing the sneery monkey is going to be trouble in future episodes.)

kalowski

Quote from: JesusAndYourBush on November 04, 2019, 06:56:21 PM
I've not read the book, and after watching the first episode last night I was totally confused about the talking animals.
Everyone has to have a talking animal accompany them?   Or people turn into an animal when they're older, or something?  Not a clue mate.  That totally baffled me and just made the whole thing seem silly.  (I'm guessing the sneery monkey is going to be trouble in future episodes.)
They are people's souls, basically. (It actually said this in the captions at the start). As a child your daemon can take any shape but when you reach adulthood it settles on a single form.

Phil_A

Quote from: olliebean on November 04, 2019, 03:02:29 PM
I haven't read them either, but Lawrence Miles did what I presume is a good comparison: https://twitter.com/Lawrence_Miles/status/1191163827339120640

I already knew it was going to be a load of wank as soon as that caption he's screencapped appeared.

He's hit on something I found distinctly off-putting, the overt Potterising of that opening scene of Asrael delivering the baby Lyra to the college. It's lazy shorthand to try and get the viewer's attention straight away, "Remember that thing you like? This is a bit like that, isn't it?"

It was...fine, I guess. But not really any more than that. A typical slice of BBC fectly purement for Sunday nights.

Johnny Yesno

Quote from: olliebean on November 04, 2019, 03:02:29 PM
I haven't read them either, but Lawrence Miles did what I presume is a good comparison: https://twitter.com/Lawrence_Miles/status/1191163827339120640

I already knew it was going to be a load of wank as soon as that caption he's screencapped appeared.

I enjoyed it but it's true about the destiny nonsense.




purlieu

Thought it was good, but also very rushed - I haven't read the books in a while, but I knew that everything we saw was far more fleshed out. The teaser for the rest of the series was really necessary for a wider audience, I think, as it shows that yes, this is going to get a lot bigger and more exciting.

Couple of observations:
It's undoubtedly for budgetary reasons, but barely any characters had on-screen daemons, which was a bit jarring. The Gyptians had the birds flying around, and all of the 'main' characters had them, but everyone else was just a person, sans animal.

James McAvoy did a decent job as Asriel, but he's very different from the version of him in my head. I imagine him being a few years older, and being a bit more of a commanding presence; more of an Eccleston Doctor than a Smith Doctor, to use an analogy that works for me.

The whole prophecy / chosen one thing I can completely see people's objections to, but at the same time I sort of understand the desire for in 2019 mainstream television. It doesn't have to be like that, but it definitely really, really helps hook people in. We're no longer in an era where a TV show can be a sleeper hit, so I can forgive this sort of stuff as simply an artefact of the medium it's presented in.

Definitely decent enough viewing, but as with others, I'm definitely looking forward to the second series a lot - so much atmosphere in The Subtle Knife - and am really curious to see how the third and fourth will go, as The Amber Spyglass (at that length it's got to be two) is a fucking bonkers book. Not always successful, but full of staggeringly imaginative imagery (the parts in the world of the dead, the wheeled creatures, God dying), and I can't begin to imagine how it's going to look on screen.

chveik

it's going to get cancelled after this series, mark my words!

wooders1978

I really enjoyed it - I like Macavoy but not as asriel, he might have been better as Scoresby (for me Daniel Craig was bang on casting as asriel in the shitty movie they made, the only good thing, apart from the polar bear fight, in the whole thing)

I was also nostalgic about a really good bbc kids tv series in the winter months as a boy

Next ep looks great too

Overall - V GOOD