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There’s evil all around for Lyra and her new pal Will as the TV version of Philip Pullman’s epic fantasy returns for a new series

Our indispensable 52-page guide inc lu desj ac is tephen’ s Soap Watch, your essential Movie Planner and a sneak peek at series two of His Dark Materials

After your father kills your best friend, how do you move on? For His Dark Materials’ Lyra Belacqua it’s by crossing a bridge into a new world full of deathly creatures, which also contains a boy who’s as lost as she is.

The hit BBC1 fantasy series is back for a second outing with even more adventure and a new star in Andrew Scott, who was Moriarty in Sherlock. Also returning are the host of talking animals, known as daemons, which are the physical manifestations of the characters’ souls. Teenager Lyra (Dafne Keen) tries to learn about the powerful ‘Dust’ which has opened up the link between the worlds, find her father Lord Asriel (James Mcavoy) and evade her equally murderous mother Mrs Coulter (Ruth Wilson). Aeronaut Lee Scoresby is on his own mission to help Lyra.

In semi-abandoned Cittagazze she meets Will (Amir Wilson), who has been caring for his mentally ill mother since his explorer father John Parry (Andrew Scott) disappeared when he was a child. He has as much reason to be suspicious of people as Lyra. ‘Series one was about Lyra trying to find her kidnapped friend Roger – now she is grieving and angry,’ says the show’s writer Jack Thorne. ‘We’re in new worlds – Lyra even visits a very different version of the Oxford she grew up in.

‘This series is about learning to trust others and to trust herself.

When Lyra meets Will she has just been taught the worst lesson she could be by her own father; he lied to her about who he was, then about what he was doing and then committed an atrocity against her best friend. Will has also grown up in a very difficult environment but they need to be together to reach their destiny.’

The world of His Dark Materials,

created by author Philip Pullman, lacks adult role models. Lyra’s parents – who left her in a dusty college – are conniving. So it’s interesting that the new series, based on book two of the trilogy, The Subtle Knife, opens in Cittagazze, which is inhabited only by feral children; the adults have been gobbled by the nefarious Spectres.

While there, Lyra convinces

Will to take her through a portal to his version of Oxford, where she can try to find out more about what her father was investigating when he vanished from her life again. She is fascinated by modern inventions such as telephones and cars, as in her world the dictatorial Magisterium has done its best to outlaw science.

The more time Lyra and Will spend together the more they become a force to be reckoned with as they fight evil from several worlds at once. ‘Lyra and Will are both in this horrible place, but what they realise is they are a puzzle; they complete each other,’ says Dafne. ‘It is a moving depiction of how another person can really save you from horror.’ Nicole Lampert His Dark Materials returns tomorrow at 8.10pm on BBC1.