Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is one of my favourite series of novels, a complex trilogy of fantasy novels that appeal to people of all ages. It was a series that won the Carnegie Medal and Whitbread Book of the Year awards and was voted as one of the best novels by the British public back in 2003. In 2015 it was announced that the BBC and Bad Wolf Productions were going to adapt the series to TV and recently HBO has agreed to co-produce the show. A dream of mine was to make my own adaptation but considering the recent developments that seem unnecessary but as a fan of the novels I can still offer my advice and opinions.
The first and foremost issue is the TV series needs to keep the religious themes in tack. Pullman is an atheist and he was influenced by the 17th-century epic poem Paradise Lost. The novels are set in worlds where people are suppressed by religious organisations, include the protagonist’s, Lyra Belacqua. Forces across various universes unite to go to war with The Authority and his allies. The biggest mistake that the 2007 film adaptation made, toning down the critical elements to appease fundamental audiences – an audience that would never have been interested in His Dark Materials and it was a move that alienated fans of the novels. There are plenty of people of faith who enjoy the novels as a fantasy story and only fundamentalists would refuse any exposure to the franchise.
His Dark Materials has a lot of talented people working on it. Producers Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner worked on shows like Doctor Who, Torchwood and Da Vinci’s Demons and Jack Throne is a renowned screenwriter and playwright in the UK – he is best known for writing Harry Potter and the Cursed Child for the West End. Tom Hooper, director of The King Speech and Les Misérables is directing the first episode and also acting as a producer. Plus there are the broadcasters who are involved. The BBC has been increasing its output of quality shows, getting big name actors to appealing in shows like A Very English Scandal, Collateral, and McMafia, and HBO is a broadcaster which hardly shies away from controversy. The early seasons of Game of Thrones were seen as a faithful adaptation of the first couple of novels.
The other issue that affected The Golden Compass film was its tone because it was too sanitised. Even the first novel had themes and plotlines involving war, murder, child disappearance, and human experimentation. One of the most poignant moments in The Golden Compass/Northern Lights was when Lyra and the Gyptians encounter one of the victims of Mrs. Coulter’s experiments, a boy who lost his dæmon. He literally lost his soul and was so traumatised that he held a dead fish as a dæmon, feared by the residents of small Norwegian village and most of the Gyptian party and died because of the physical and emotional strain. The film crossed this character with others, Billy Costa, a friend of Lyra’s and Billy’s mother held him and said they would find his dæmon – this undercuts the importance of this moment and the TV series needs to be more loyal to the novel.
Northern Light/The Golden Compass ended with Lyra’s father killing her best friend because the energy it released allowed Lord Asriel to open a portal to a parallel universe. The theatrical version of The Gold Compass ends at an earlier point with Lyra and her allies flying to Svalbard. But to be fair to writer/director Chris Weitz he did include this scene in his director’s cut and New Line Cinema planned to use the scene in the sequel that never happened.
If child death and soul stealing wasn’t bad enough the subsequent novels only get darker. The Subtle Knife starts with a 12-year-old boy accidentally killing a man and being forced to go on the run, a witch getting tortured by having her fingernails pulled out, someone getting three fingers cut off and a world being swarming with soul-sucking creatures. The final novel has the main characters go to the world of the dead, a decaying void where the spirits of people rot for all eternity.
The novels were aimed towards children above the age of 10 and the series would need to aim for a 12/PG-13 rating so some of the violence would need to be toned down – an example would be when Iorek Bynison kills his rival and eats his heart would need to be changed to Iorek simply killing him. But the series needs to keep the tone of the novels.
The visual style and art direction is also an important element of the film. When I read the books I pictured Lyra’s world as being a steampunk, Victorian setting – it was smoky and industrial and there are huge divides between the rich and the poor. Soldiers dressed in uniforms that would be similar to what 19th-century armies wore and used bolt-action rifles and technology in this world included airships. When Will Parry offered Lyra some clothes she refused to wear trousers because girls and women only wore skirts and dresses – despite Lyra being a rough and tumble, tomboy character. A mistake the film version made was showing Lyra’s world to be too bright and modern. One scene showed Lyra and Mrs. Coulter going to London on an airship and in the background was The Gherkin building which was out of place in the setting. London would have some famous buildings like The Houses of Parliament and Tower Bridge but more modern landmarks wouldn’t exist. Fortunately early set stills show the series is going for a more gothic art-direction.
When the series moves beyond Lyra’s world the other universes need to be made to stand out. Will’s world is our world so it can be shot as it is, Mary ends up going to the land of the Mulefa which is alien – it has creatures who have a symbiotic relationship with nature, a land that is made up of redwood trees that are even larger than the ones in California, covered in roads made from ancient lava and the residents fear giant mute swans. When the adventure moves to world Lord Asriel sets up to be his base of operations it would be wise for the show creators to go to the Tate Art Gallery in London and look at the religious paintings from the 1880s showing angels laying on rocks surrounded by lava – it was how I pictured scenes in my head.
Another important aspect would be the locations. His Dark Materials is filming at Pinewood’s new studio in Wales and the show has looked to film some scenes in Iceland. His Dark Materials will be an epic show that would need to be filmed in many locations in Europe. The most obvious place the show needs to be filmed would be in Oxford since a lot of the story takes place in two versions of the city – but one of the key scenes in The Subtle Knife is Lyra goes to the location where Jordan College would be in her world and discovers it doesn’t exist in Will’s. The show could film in other cities with similar architecture like Cambridge, York, and Bath just so Lyra’s Oxford could have an otherworldly feel. The first season would also need to film in a Scandinavian country because half of Northern Lights/The Golden Compass takes place in Norway and the show would need to visit a snow-covered town whilst the city of Cittagazze is described to be like an Italian city and the surrounding area would need to reflect this. There are many picturesque towns in Italy the show could film in.
As well as locations the show needs to reflect the fantasy with its special effects. With HBO’s involvement His Dark Materials should be able to use that broadcaster’s money and expertise to bring the universe to life. HBO was about to give us convincing dragons and giants in Game of Thrones and they would need to do the same with His Dark Materials’ armoured clan bears and Mulefa creatures.
The other concern for any fan is the cast. Fortunately, the TV series has been making the right moves. Dafne Keen of Logan fame is playing the lead character and she clearly got the talent to play the character – the only issue is Keen has dark hair and in the novels Lyra is blonde – but it’s nothing that a little hair dye can sort out. The series has a lot of respected actors – Anne-Marie Duff is an inspired choice to play Ma Costa. As a fan I had my own dream choices like Michael Fassbender, Rachael Weisz, and Alan Tudyk as Lord Asriel, Mrs.Coulter, and Lee Scoresby but I can hardly complain about the casting of James McAvoy, Ruth Wilson, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. There is still hope that Paddy Considine, Kate Dickie, Richard E. Grant, and Michael Sheen would be cast as Stanislaus Grumman, Mary Malone, Sir Charles Latrom and Metatron in the second and third series.
Since we got to the subject we may as well address how long the seasons will be. The first season is set to be eight episodes long and the BBC has already ordered a second season which will properly have the same number of episodes because the books are roughly same the length. The third season would need to be longer because The Amber Spyglass is twice the length so would need a run of around 12 episodes. The big issue is novels take place over a few weeks and the TV series would need to be filmed fast because actors age. Lyra and Will are 12 in the novels and if they grow up too quickly it would break the time frame. The Walking Dead has lasted eight seasons and takes place over the course of a year as evident by Judith’s lack of growth – but Chandler Riggs clearly growing up a lot during the show’s run. Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner clearly grew up on screen as Game of Thrones progressed.
Finally the series could expand the story beyond what the novels showed. The series seems to be on track to do this – it has already cast Will Keen (Dafne’s father) as Father MacPhail, the head of the Magisterium and a character who doesn’t appear until the third novel. Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones have gone beyond what was described in their text – the Lord of the Rings films built on the romance between Aragorn and Arwen and showed events in real time like the clash between Gandalf and Saruman and the parallel stories in The Two Towers and Return of the King. The Game of Thrones TV series was able to be more explicit like the purge of Robert Baratheon’s illegitimate children and Renly Baratheon’s homosexuality that was only implied in the novels. The His Dark Materials series could look deeper into Lyra’s world, Will’s struggles looking after his mother and the biggest picture like the growing conflict between the forces of The Authority and Lord Asriel’s rebellion.
The series could also expand on the final battle between The Authority and Lord Asriel – it was briefly looked touched on in The Amber Spyglass but it was seen mostly through Lyra and Will’s eyes as they try and retrieve their lost dæmons. What we do know is it was a large battle with people from many worlds using unique weapons and His Dark Materials could do what the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter films did with their battles and His Dark Materials could follow the example set in shows like Game of Thrones and Vikings that had big battle episodes. It would be biblical as poison cannons are fired and angels fight in the sky.
