‘His Dark Materials’ series coming to BBC.

Am I going to be impolite, here? …Yes. Yes, I think so. I feel that it’s good that the people making His Dark Materials have admitted to themselves that the appeal of petulant Gnosticism has gotten more selective:

BBC has released the official teaser trailer for their upcoming fantasy series His Dark Materials, offering us our first look at Dafne Keen, James McAvoy, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ruth Wilson’s characters as Lyra, Lord Asriel, Lee Scoresby and Mrs. Coulter, respectively. The series adaptation is based on Philip Pullman’s novel trilogy of the same name. 

Having read the original trilogy,* I can say with some certainty (and no little amount of honeyed venom) that Hollywood should have gone with its undoubted first instinct with The Golden Compass by ripping out every bit of atheism from the book, in order to make more room for cool bears with armor. It was just a bad fit for the American popular market, friends. I am making a good-faith effort to not judge people who legitimately liked these books; after all, I liked Justice League, so I got no room to talk, right? But this isn’t a great era for popular religious-themed kid flicks**.

But the BBC is a much better choice. Series, so it can be longer; done by the BBC, so they can keep the production costs down on the special effects; and, best of all, it’ll be thoroughly insulated from the cruel demands of the market. Oh, and I suppose that it might not actually suck, either — but since I won’t be paying for any of it either way, who cares?

Moe Lane

PS: …What? I’m not the arbiter of taste for Western Civilization (although if the job is available, I’ll happily take it if there’s an expense account for travel attached). Just because I turn up my nose at something doesn’t mean nobody else can be allowed to enjoy it.

*One of the great burdens of trying to be well-read in the field of alternate history (and, false modesty aside, I am well-read in that field) is that you have to read the unaccountably popular stuff, too.

**If we’re being extra-fair, this is plausibly the same problem that the Narnia series has: while the first one started strong, the next two dropped in revenue to the point where the fourth movie is looking increasingly likely to not get made, and if it does, it’ll be on Netflix.