His Dark Materials
 

Coming this Fall

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At San Diego Comic-Con Thursday, HBO network dropped the first full-length trailer for His Dark Materials, based on the bestselling trilogy by Philip Pullman.

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This one is set in a world not terribly unlike our own, except that each person has an animal soul companion known as a "daemon" hanging about. At the center of the story is Lyra (played by Dafne Keen of Logan), a young girl who gets entangled in a dark conspiracy after her friend is kidnapped.

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It's the second screen adaptation of the series, which was previously made into a movie in 2007. If the new TV series is able to capture the spirit of the novels, prepare yourself for one strange, twisty, and irresistibly addictive ride.

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His Dark Materials lands on HBO this fall. James McAvoy, Ruth Wilson, and Lin-Manuel Miranda also star.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Trailer here.

https://www.cableforum.uk/board/show...40&postcount=3

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Looking forward to it.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Nice one, always a shame they never filmed more than the 1st book.

The new book is due October I think.

His Dark Materials
 

BBC One’s Philip Pullman adaptation His Dark Materials will premiere on Sunday November 3rd.

https://www.tvwise.co.uk/2019/09/bbc...w5lLfIMNFiE2kE

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Surely you mean BBC One & HBO's?

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Yes that is what l meant.;)

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Thought so.;)

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Looking forward to this. A bit late to this as I only recently heard the complete Radio adaptation when it was repeated a few months ago. Always try to support UK Sci-fi/Fantasy TV shows.

Hopefully Good Omens should be coming to BBC Two soon, the DVD release has been revealed recently and it's fairly soon. The box art only has a BBC logo on it (that I could see), a bit of a reversal of the Amazon heavy promos which rarely mentioned it was a originally a BBC production and became a co-production.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Hmmm, well that looks familiar.

Its the Golden Compass is it not ?

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Yes. That's the name for the Northern Lights book, the 1st in His Dark Materials trilogy, in places like America. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Lights_(novel)

Re: His Dark Materials
 

The series premieres on Monday 4th November fyi although that is on HBO in the US and this thread is UK timeline. I don't know if it will be on Sky Atlantic same day. Keep your eyes peeled:shocked:

Re: His Dark Materials
 

It's a BBC co-production, Sky Atlantic doesn't come into it. BBC1 date is in the first post.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Well don’t hold your breath. Pullman has a massive chip on his shoulder about religion and hates the fact that the genre-defining authors in his field (Tolkien and Lewis) both treat faith and spirituality as inherently good things. As a result his work is rather negative and spiteful. IMO, of course ...

Re: His Dark Materials
 

It will be interesting to see what deal they struck then and how long the BBC have got to wait for it. I know HBO stuff is normally shown on Sky Atlantic over here.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

They don't have to wait.

BBC Sunday 3rd Nov.

HBO Monday 4th Nov.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

The BBC announced it had commissioned a TV adaptation of the trilogy in November 2015 with Bad Wolf and New Line Cinema making it.

HBO only came on as co-producer and international distributor in September 2018.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Good, that is exactly how it should be with every series if you arent on a unified service like Netflix.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Did anybody watch the first episode last night? as personally l thought it was very good and a huge improvement on the 2007 film version.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

I did. I agree.

I saw an artcle headline last night that said that they've incorporated parts of the Book Of Dust into this new production. I'm unfamiliar with it so won't be able to tell, but it seems sensible is the story timelines overlap.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

It was well produced, and my youngest loved it (she’s a big fan of the Potter films so it’s right up her street). I enjoyed it as a piece of event TV. It’s good to see the BBC acknowledging that the golden age of TV we are now in is in large part driven by the fantasy genre, which our public service broadcasters pay far too little attention to.

However, I still don’t really like Pullman as a writer in this genre. Where fantasy is used as a lens to examine real-world issues it generally works best where those issues are ones that are hard to approach directly (so Star Trek, for example, was able to raise questions about sex and racial equality by locating it in space, in the 23rd century, while back in the 1960s it was still a hot potato). Pullman, as I’ve observed before, has a massive chip on his shoulder about organised religion and the Roman Catholic Church in particular. His Dark Materials presents the Catholic Church (one of whose less well known historic titles is “the Magisterium”) as a medieval inquisition clothed in Nazi chic. It’s about as subtle as a brick.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Not seen it yet, maybe tonight.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

https://deadline.com/2019/11/his-dar...bc-1202782680/

It lost 1.5m viewers in the second ep, it will be interesting to see if the downward trend continues.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

That type of rating drop for second episodes are usually par for the course in my view General.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Given that it’s meant to be a story for upper primary/lower high school kids, it’s doing pretty well so far. It is suffering slightly from having been written by a high school English teacher who obviously has a very clear idea what a classic children’s story is supposed to be like, and has very deliberately set out to write one; it’s suffering further by being dramatised by people who grew up watching classic children’s literature being serialised by the BBC in the 1970s and 80s. Sure, it’s fantastical, but once you get used to the admittedly superb CG creatures that follow the main characters around there are long passages when it looks a bit ordinary. A lot of creeping up and down corridors. The occasional, grand-scale CG settings, like the university crypt, are the equal of Potter or Middle Earth as seen on the big screen, but scenes like that are, so far, few and far between. I’m hoping they’ve saved the budget for the crazy stuff still to come “up north”. We’ll still be watching it anyway as my youngest loves it, and to be fair she is the target audience.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Season 2 starts on November 16th.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Well it turns out that was the US start date.

Season 2 Episode 1 was on in the UK tonight, just caught up on it - good start. :)

Re: His Dark Materials
 

I thought there had been a mix up somewhere :p: I originally had it down for the 8th November and then everything else I saw subsequently said 16th so I assumed I had just made a mistake.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

His Dark Materials Renewed for Third and Final Season at HBO, BBC

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Good :D

The books are/were a trilogy, so its no surprise the series will be as well.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Exactly, there's no more story to tell.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

I've just found out my cousin is the editor for 2 episodes of Season 3 and he's just spent a month in Cardiff doing that.

Is this show any good, I may give it a go?

Re: His Dark Materials
 

S3 is coming next year
It was in the 2022 video released by HBO
https://www.thewrap.com/westworld-se...son-2-hbo-max/

Re: His Dark Materials
 

No

Re: His Dark Materials
 

If you can imagine one of the classic children’s serials the BBC used to make in the 70s and 80s, but multiply the budget by about a million, you’ll get the idea. Philip Pullman (the author whose novels have been adapted for this series) was an English teacher, which helps explain the general tone and target age of the story. Pullman is also a mouth-frothing atheist with a major chip on his shoulder over the success of CS Lewis and his Chronicles of Narnia, which function at various points as Christian morality tales and occasionally outright allegory, and designed his own series as an attack on the institution of the Church (represented here, with all the subtlety of a house brick, as “the Magisterium”).

Despite this the story is actually very good and the adaptation has extremely high production values. The conversion from book to TV is better in season 1 than in season 2, which feels a little laboured at times, but in its defence, season 2 was heavily impacted by the first covid lockdown.

It is aimed squarely at a family audience but in a similar way to Doctor Who is. You don’t need to have kids in the room as an excuse to watch. I’d say it’s well worth a go - the whole lot is on iPlayer at the moment.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Actually l really enjoyed it.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

He means Yes.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

First episode of season 1 seems interesting and strange.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Yes.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Well I'm 4 episodes in and I'm really enjoying this, I've learnt that if General doesn't like a show then I often love it.

My Cousin got given an Alethiometer when his contract ended for being the editor of a few episodes for S3, I'm jealous!

Re: His Dark Materials
 

:shocked:

Likewise extremely jealous!

Do you happen to know if it was a production prop or is it a collectible replica?

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Me too.

That's the most identifiable and iconic thing in the HDM universe, I can't see the production props being given to anyone on the crew unless they were there the whole production.

A collectable replica is still a lovely gift from them though.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Just got the answer for this and I am even more jealous!

Re: His Dark Materials
 

:shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked:

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Me too!!!

I'll ask him if i can share the pic of it, not sure if he will agree though.

1 of 300 unique solid brass Alethiometers
https://www.cableforum.uk/board/atta...1&d=1640897967

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Ooo nice :)

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Roll on S3 I need more damn it, excellent series in my opinion.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Indeed, and hopefully it wont be too long, its due in early 2022, I think.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

I don't know the release date but filming has wrapped up and edited and it is 8 episodes.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

I wonder if they'll decide to do The Book Of Dust trilogy. I know they put a little bit of them in S1. I enjoyed the BBC Radio adaptations of the first 2.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

They have no plans to.

Re: His Dark Materials
 

Well not quite Early 2022, but the first two episodes came out the other day.

I havent seen them yet, still ctching up on Titans atm.