Between Watchmen and now His Dark Materials, HBO’s strategy this fall is becoming clear. Take a popular book that had a big movie misfire in the 2000s, and do it better. For Watchmen, that meant make a sequel that expands upon the world of Alan Moore’s comic. For His Dark Materials, it just means a faithful adaptation of The Golden Compass. This has been one of my most eagerly anticipated premieres of the fall. His Dark Materials is one of my favorite book series, even as an adult. Even now, watching this new version, the crushing disappointment that was 2007’s The Golden Compass still lingers.
Honestly, there probably wasn’t much that movie could have done. After Return of the King, when every movie studio was trying to make another Lord of the Rings, The Golden Compass was definitely trying to fill that niche. The problem is, much more than Lord of the Rings, the His Dark Materials books are explicitly aimed at kids. Any movie adaptation would also have to be. The problem is there are things you can get away with in print that you can’t on film.
The book has some graphic descriptions of violence, and children are subjected to something that the book implies is pretty horrific. (Trying not to spoil things before they happen in the series here.) Not to mention the fact that the book has a real downer ending. Not exactly PG kids’ movie material. So all that got softened or sanitized, or cut, and we were left with a very pretty, but lifeless movie. This is all to say that if anyone wouldn’t have that problem when adapting this series, it’d be HBO. At least I hope so.
James McAvoy as Lord Asriel in ‘His Dark Materials.’ (Photo Credit: HBO)
His Dark Materials starts with some opening text setting up the basic premise of the series. This is a parallel world, similar to our own except in a few key ways. Human souls live outside their bodies as daemon familiars. The Magisterium (Philip Pullman’s thinly veiled stand-in for the Catholic Church) rules the world. In the north, away from the Magisterium’s influence, there are witches that speak of a child with some kind of destiny. That’s our main character, Lyra. We then see her as a baby during a great worldwide flood. Her uncle, Lord Asriel, delivers her to Oxford’s Jordan College. He says she won’t be safe without scholastic sanctuary.
That’s a lot of exposition for the opening minutes of the TV show. I definitely think all the stuff about the Magisterium and the witches could have been handled better. That’s information they could have easily shown us without all the text at the beginning. The daemon stuff… yeah, that was probably the way to communicate that information. The book presents the daemons’ existence as a matter of fact, no reason the show shouldn’t either. And hey, whatever gets us to the meat of the story faster. To the show’s credit, it does explain how daemons work in a way that feels much more natural and motivated by the story. We see a Gyptian ceremony to celebrate a boy named Tony Costa’s daemon settling into a permanent form. It’s seen as the moment when a child moves into adulthood.
The show also uses the daemons to show us people’s personality traits before they come out in the person. It’s a simple enough thing to describe in the pages of a book, but the show captures it surprisingly well. In a couple cases, the daemons are used to foreshadow what’s to come, and create a sense of dread. Tony’s brother Billy, feeling like his brother is leaving him behind, runs off from the ceremony. His small rat-shaped daemon runs into a scary-looking yellow cat. The next thing we know, a mysterious figure is carrying Billy away in a net.
Photo Credit: HBO
Meanwhile, Lyra, now an older child, is running along the rooftops of the school with her friend Roger and generally getting into mischief. When she learns her uncle has come back from an expedition up north, she sneaks out of class and tries to go meet him in the retirement room, which is forbidden to students. There, she sees the school’s master try to poison her uncle. When the master leaves, she knocks the glass out of Lord Asriel’s hand and warns him that it was poisoned. He enlists her as a spy for him, and she gets to hear exactly what the master didn’t want him to say. It turns out in his expedition to the North, he discovered proof of the existence of Dust, a substance the Magesterium preaches gathers around adults, but not children. In this case, the Magesterium was right. Then, he shows photographic evidence of another world. A city in the Northern Lights, hidden by Dust. That is blasphemy, and jeopardizes the school’s autonomy from the church. That’s why the Master didn’t want it said.
The pilot episode had a lot to get done in an hour. It had to introduce a world that will be completely new to a lot of people watching. It had to introduce the different factions that will be grappling for power, and make us care about all these different characters: Lyra, Roger, Lord Asriel, Mrs. Coulter, the Costa family… Not easy to do. Overall, I’m impressed with how much it accomplished. Yes, it dragged a bit. There are only so many long, expository explanations you can put in a TV episode and keep the pace going. Well-made as this show is, it couldn’t quite pull that off. As a fan of the books though, this was immensely satisfying. It was a truly faithful adaptation of the first chapter of The Golden Compass. No shortcuts, no missing characters. It was everything I’ve wanted since 2007.
Ruth Wilson as Mrs. Coulter in ‘His Dark Materials.’ (Photo Credit: HBO)
Lord Asriel secures funding to continue his research and flies off in an airship the next day, leaving behind a heartbroken Lyra. She was hoping he’d take her away with him to explore. It’s not long before she’ll have to leave Oxford anyway. That night, a scholar and explorer named Mrs. Coulter shows up. Lyra is instantly fascinated by her. When Coulter asks Lyra to be her assistant and travel with her, Lyra immediately accepts.
It appears that’s been the plan, too. After Asriel’s speech brought Magisterium scrutiny to the college, the Master can no longer keep Lyra safe. He arranged for Mrs. Coulter to take her. Though he says he thinks he can trust her, even he’s not too sure. He gives Lyra a golden object called an alethiometer, a device that tells the truth if you know how to use it. He also tells her to keep it a secret from everybody. Including Mrs. Coulter. I love the bit of foreshadowing that comes after this. As Lyra adjusts the item in her pocket, Mrs. Coulter’s creepy golden monkey daemon becomes very interested in what she’s doing.
Every shot of His Dark Materials is packed with careful world-building and detail. This show just looks so good. That’s not even mentioning the absolutely perfect casting. Lyra is plucky, adventurous, and exactly how I imagined her when I read the book. James McAvoy as Lord Asriel is that perfect mix of dignified and threatening. You can see why Lyra is so in awe of him, and also why she should probably be more afraid of him than she is. The Costa family, all the Gyptians really, are so well acted you generally feel their loss. As Ma Costa is told that the Gobblers aren’t just a children’s story, that they actually have been taking Gyptian children, you just feel so hopeless and sad for her.
Photo Credit: HBO
Then there’s Mrs. Coulter. In her first few scenes, she is so charming. The 2007 movie went a little too Hollywood villain with her too quickly. Here, you can see why Lyra is so enamored with her. She’s funny and quick-witted, and she’s the only one who talks to Lyra as though she’s an equal. Like she’s listening to what Lyra has to say. It’s no wonder Lyra is so eager to leave with her. The show also makes it clear that she isn’t totally on the up and up. After she reluctantly agrees to bring Roger on the journey too, we see her facial expression change. In the next scene, we see Roger being stalked by the same yellow cat Billy Costa saw before he was taken. Odd timing, huh? For now though, Mrs. Coulter says she’ll help Lyra find him. She tells her that the Gobblers are real, and that they’ve taken Roger to London. Lyra’s best chance of finding her friend lies with her.
Even when some scenes were overstuffed, even when the episode dragged just a bit, I was fascinated by every moment of this show. There’s just so much going on in every scene, with each detail hinting at the state of the larger world. Starting a show like this, setting up a world so different from our own, is hard. The premiere of His Dark Materials did a fine job. I was nervous going in. This is one of my favorite books, and the last thing I wanted was another pretty failure like I got in 2007. So far, this show has the dramatic chops to tell this story. In every moment as I watched this show, one thought kept coming up: I’m so happy this exists.
His Dark Materials airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on HBO.
More on Geek.com:
- HBO ‘His Dark Materials’ Fantasy Series Teaser: ‘Nightmares Tell All’
- BBC’s ‘His Dark Materials’ Series Trailer Teases Eerie Parallel Worlds
- HBO Greenlights Targaryen ‘Game of Thrones’ Prequel Series
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