There’s no escaping the difficulty of adapting Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials
Pullman’s books—The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass—together make a fantasy story that engages with religion, and then quite controversially, entirely rejects it
Pullman’s long been a critic of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series, which presents a talking lion-king as a Jesus-like figure
His Dark Materials reads as a direct response, putting vulnerable children in the same high-stakes battle of good and evil before rerouting the story through quantum physics, untrustworthy parents, and an uncaring God
His Dark Materials, the new television adaptation produced for HBO and BBC One, is a welcome reminder of the pugnacious, enchanting source material, a Paradise Lost for children
But for such creative source material, TV’s His Dark Materials doesn’t push the envelope in any direction at all
It’s an intensely faithful adaptation of the books, in a way that tends to bog down the suspense and pace of the story
It’s hard to blame the production—over-exposition is a small price to pay in a universe with parallel worlds, talking bears, and shapeshifting telepathic animal companions
But the result is that the characters’ emotional reality feels held away at arm’s length, in a story that adroitly uses childhood emotions to up the ante of its plot stakes
Our protagonist is Lyra (Dafne Keen), a 13-year-old orphan raised by the professors at Oxford College
She lives in Britain, but in a world where airships dominate the sky, soldiers ride armored polar bears, and every single human has an animal companion, called a daemon
Hers is named Pan (voiced by Kit Connor). To His Dark Materials’ enormous credit, the show managed to make the daemons—which shape-shift until their humans become adults—into convincingly magical, mostly adorable CGI companions
Her world seems amazing—growing up with a dedicated pet and no pesky parents in Hogwarts-esque college is literally, a fantasy—but rebellious, independent Lyra is about to discover the terrible reach of the Magisterium, an all-powerful entity that certainly looks like the Catholic Church
The world of His Dark Materials is not a kind one. Adults lie to Lyra constantly, manipulating her into roles that serve their needs
The opulently wealthy Magisterium kills with shocking impunity. Her friends mysteriously go missing, and the eventually revealed truth of what’s happening to the children is stomach-turning
His Dark Materials is a little hesitant to lean into the darkness of the story in the way that, say, Game of Thrones would
Perhaps the goal is to preserve, for younger viewers, the sense of wonder in Lyra’s world
But when it does lean into the horror, it’s incredibly effective; Lyra’s very understandable fears activate the fantasy to make it feel real
In the third episode, when she is taken to London, she’s even younger and more vulnerable than Katniss Everdeen is entering the Capitol in The Hunger Games
Keen, who broke out in 2017 opposite Hugh Jackman in Logan, looks the part as Lyra—a gangly spitfire with a skill for scaling roofs
But when it comes to emotional realism, she’s in a difficult position; her primary scene partners and Lyra's closest companions, daemon Pan and the bear Iorek Byrnison (voiced by Joe Tandberg), are both CGI creations
Keen struggles to carry Lyra’s characterization on her own, and the show doesn’t do much to help her
Instead Lyra faces off with antagonists who are more compelling characters than she is—chiefly, Uncle Asriel (James McAvoy, swashbuckling) and Mrs
Coulter (Ruth Wilson, sublime). In the book, Lyra’s narration gives us all the information we need
In the show, it feels as if a lot of information about who she is as a person is missing
Lyra’s there, we can see her. But too much of the time, in showrunner Jack Thorne's approach, we are looking at her instead of watching through her eyes
The adaptation is, as a result, flatter and more conventional than the book deserves
By the time Lee Scoresby (Lin-Manuel Miranda) shows up, the series feels more like flighty Mary Poppins than the gutsy takedown of organized religion it’s supposed to be—although props to James Cosmo, Commander Mormont himself, for grounding Keen’s performance in a sweet father-daughter dynamic
At least the TV series is thorough and clear, making it a great introduction to the books—especially for children
But this adaptation leaves most of the bloody heart of His Dark Materials on the table
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