Dark Materials wrap us up in a brilliant fantasy world
The opening moments of His Dark Materials (BBC One) informed us: “This story starts in another world …one that is both like, and unlike your own.” That’s right: a world in which the BBC can blow the budget on a fantasy series that Netflix would have given its right arm to make.
Wait! Don’t cancel your licence fee just yet. This adaptation of Philip Pullman’s bestselling trilogy was part-funded by HBO, an American broadcaster with deep pockets. And that partnership has allowed the BBC to produce a gorgeously-realised drama that – almost – does justice to the source material.
The setting is Oxford, but not as we know it. Human souls take physical form as animals, known as daemons. The world is ruled by the Magisterium, an all-powerful body of the Church, and Lord Asriel (a flinty James Mcavoy) is venturing into the frozen wastes of the North to investigate a mysterious substance known as Dust. Our heroine is 12-year-old Lyra Belacqua (Dafne Keen), who was given scholastic sanctuary at Jordan College as a baby and now runs rings around its fusty dons, led by The Master (Clarke Peters). And children are disappearing from the streets, rumoured to have been abducted by mysterious ‘Gobblers’.
It may sound like the recipe for a CBBC series, but His Dark Materials was never your standard children’s adventure, despite the young girl at its centre and the presence of a talking polar bear called Iorek Byrnison. For starters, that 12-year-old has to wrestle with the dark forces of organised religion, and the first time we meet the bear (a treat for later in the series) it is a washed-up drunk. Pullman’s books are intelligent fare, dealing with questions of fate and original sin. With all due respect to JK Rowling, this is a step up from Harry Potter.
Dafne Keen is a find, perfectly portraying that tricky period on the cusp of adolescence when you’re desperate to grow up but a tiny bit afraid of it too. Lyra is a wonderful character, rule-breaking and brave, unaware that a great destiny awaits. “We can be scared for her, and scared of her,” says one of her guardians.
Into Lyra’s world like a velvet-clad Hedy Lamarr comes the fantastically sinister Mrs Coulter, played by Ruth Wilson. As an actress, Wilson always holds the attention; here she is magnetic. Mrs Coulter is accompanied by a golden (well, ginger) monkey. Lyra’s daemon spent most of this episode as an ermine, while Lord
Asriel has a snow leopard voiced in sultry tones by Helen Mccrory. The special effects here are brilliant. It seems the most natural thing in the world to have a leopard slinking through the college halls, or a crow perched in a library. The voices, though, take some getting used to – I’m not sure how I had imagined a talking ermine to sound, but it wasn’t like a schoolboy.
The whole thing looks beautiful, if not as spectacular (or spectacularly expensive) as Game of Thrones. Best of all are the shots of Oxford’s dreaming spires, with airships hovering above. But the storyline that deals with the gyptians, a tribe of nomadic canaldwellers who propel the action in the first book of the series, is oddly flat – scenes that should be fiery and characters who should be commanding, like the gyptian leader John Faa (Lucian Msamati) and the matriarch Ma Costa (Anne-marie Duff), are underplayed.
But there is nothing here to upset fans of the books, who may have feared an adaptation as duff as the 2007 film version starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. Some things have been added – early scenes have been lifted from Pullman’s later trilogy, The Book of Dust, but that works well. If the drama doesn’t quite capture the heart-in-mouth thrills of the book, that is testament to Pullman’s writing skills rather than major deficiencies in the film-making.
It’s perfect entertainment for a Sunday night in autumn. And anyone worried that the author is trying to push atheism on to an unsuspecting nation can rest easy – as in Narnia, the religious themes are there if you look hard enough, but if that’s not your thing then the story works as a straightforward fantasy.
This series is based on the first book in Pullman’s Northern Lights trilogy. Production has already started on the second instalment, The Subtle Knife. Planning series two before series one has hit the screens can backfire – ITV executives had high hopes for a second outing of Sanditon, and I think you’ve got more chance of meeting a talking polar bear – but the BBC is on safe ground with His Dark Materials.
His Dark Materials ★★★★