Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
FANTASTIC FANTASY
Martians and daemons and bears, oh my! Some of our most loved sci-fi and fantasy tales – and a few brand new ones – are coming to life on the small screen
It’s been 12 years since the film adaptation of the first book in His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman’s bestselling fantasy trilogy, was released to a rather lacklustre reception. So fans have their fingers crossed for this lavish new BBC remake.
The story sees Lyra Belacqua and her shape-shifting daemon Pantalaimon leave their home in an Oxford college and journey to the north, where armoured polar bears and flying witches rule. This world is governed by an authoritarian body and the fanatical clerics of its ruling authority, known as the Magisterium, which dominates Oxford.
To guide her on her journey, Lyra has an alethiometer – a cryptic, truth-telling compass – and the friends she makes along the way include the boat-dwelling Gyptians, a Texan named Lee Scoresby
(played by Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the musical Hamilton), and Iorek Byrnison, the disgraced and exiled king of the bears.
Lyra, played in this eight- part series by 14-year- old Dafne Keen, leads a sheltered life at the college, where she has been placed by her uncle Lord Asriel (James McAvoy). But children are disappearing from the streets… could there be any truth to the tales of the ‘Gobblers’, who are said to steal children? Then glamorous, dangerous Mrs Coulter (Ruth Wilson) enters Lyra’s life, and she embarks on a perilous journey.
Lyra is inseparable from her daemon Pantalaimon, who she calls Pan. Everybody has a daemon, an animal that’s the physical manifestation of a person’s soul. Children’s daemons experiment, trying out different animal forms until they settle on one in adolescence: Lyra’s playful Pan is settling as a polecat; Lord Asriel’s daemon is a snow leopard; Mrs Coulter’s a spiteful golden monkey.
Such is the power of Pullman’s writing that readers will have their own vision of this fictional world. For production designer Joel Collins, this was the challenge. ‘I’d read the books and thought, “Wow! This is an opportunity to do something really exciting,”’ he says.
‘We’ve been able to create Lyra’s Oxford and built a complete town in a quarry in the Brecon Beacons for Trollesund, the Lapland port where Lyra gets support from the witches. An entire town and we had to try to hide it from everyone! It had to feel real – we had to do everything we could to make it not seem like CGI.’
Thought to be the most expensive drama in BBC history, His Dark Materials has been two years in the making. Series one, which starts in November, covers the first volume in the trilogy, Northern Lights, and a second series covering the second book, The Subtle
Knife, is already in production.
And after that? ‘The intention is to keep going,’ says Joel. ‘There’s such a weight of material, and Philip Pullman is still writing. It’s an ever-expanding world.
‘I’m so proud of what we’ve done. It’s for all ages – I just want everyone to enjoy the story.’ BBC1, coming soon