His Dark Materials – The Idea of North Review (A Book Fan’s Perspective)

“The Idea of North” builds on the plotline established in the “Lyra’s Jordan” and already starts to embellish on things that weren’t in the novel.

Lyra (Dafne Keen) has moved in with Mrs. Coulter (Ruth Wilson). However, their relationship soon becomes strained and Mrs. Coulter’s true personality starts to reveal itself. The Gyptians continue to search for the missing children. Whilst Lord Boreal (Ariyon Bakare) investigates Stanislaus Grumman’s death.

The first novel in the His Dark Materials trilogy, Northern Lights, was pretty much all told from Lyra’s perspective. There were only a few scenes where Lyra wasn’t present. The TV adaptation has already started to expand beyond the novel’s story. The storyline with the Gyptians’ search for the children was a reasonable addition to the story. The bigger change involved Boreal’s investigation since there was no mention of this in the novels and the series had already revealed one of the big twists from the novels that Lord Boreal was able to hop between worlds.

Additions to adaptations are nothing new. Even loyal adaptations like The Hunger Games movies and the early seasons of Game of Thrones did this. These additions were keeping to the tone of the source materials and usually just committed information that was implied in the novels.

His Dark Materials wants to be the next Game of Thrones: a series based on a popular series of novels. However, Northern Lights is only 400 pages long and the series seems like it already stretching itself thin because quite a bit has already been added for the TV adaptation. A faithful adaptation of Northern Lights could have been a feature film. The showrunners could have gone down the route The Last Kingdom series – a show that adapts two novels in one season.

The best feature of this episode was the interactions between Lyra and Mrs. Coulter. The relationship starts friendly enough and Mrs. Coulter even acts kind and motherly to Lyra. But this image slowly erodes. It starts small like Mrs. Coulter telling Lyra not to lie and builds from there. One of the best sequences was when Mrs. Coulter washes and tugs Lyra’s hair. It was a sequence where Mrs. Coulter was acting like she’s caring but also subtly intimidating the young girl.

Ruth Wilson is the best performer in the show so far. She nails the character’s duplicity. Mrs. Coulter does some of the evilest things imaginable in the novels but conflicted because of her relationship with Lyra. Wilson’s version of the character is already setting this groundwork. Lyra sneaks into Mrs. Coulter and discovers her plans which fans of the novel will know something will happen. Mrs. Coulter tries to turn Lyra into a mini-version of herself, getting her to wear a blue dress and changed her hairstyle.

An interesting aspect of the episode is Mrs. Coulter’s relationship with her dæmon. Lyra, Roger, and Lord Asriel are shown to be close to their dæmons and the spirit animals offer advice and caution. Pretty much every other character, good and evil, are shown to be physically close to their dæmon. But Mrs. Coulter is more distance from her and even hits him when he fails. The Golden Monkey was one of the vilest characters in the novels because he was a true sign of Mrs. Coulter’s cruelty. The TV show has actually made the Golden Monkey more sympathetic because he is abused and he has a sad expression.

As stated in my previous review Lyra’s world in the novel was Victorian in style. The TV show went for more of a 1930s, Art-Deco look. There is a logic behind it because airships were at their height in the’20s and ’30s, a glamorous period, especially for women and Mrs. Coulter states that is a rarity for women to be explorers or scientists. This Art-Deco look will make Lyra’s world have a more fascist in look as shown in the trailers for later episodes. The art-deco visuals made His Dark Materials look similar to the first Fantastic Beast films. I personally would have preferred the Victorian look.

An addition in the episode I personal liked involved Adele Starminster (Georgina Campbell). The character was a journalist who snuck into Mrs. Coulter’s party and gets kicked out. The episode looked at what happened next and this moment was showing what happens if someone touches someone else’s dæmon: the great taboo of Lyra’s world.

Phillip Pullman’s work has been considered modern retellings of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The final scene of episode acted as a reference to this because it was framed like the Pied Piper story.

“The Idea of North” was at its best showing the relationship between Lyra and Mrs. Coulter but some of the changes did not sit so well me as a book loyalist.