His Dark Materials (2019)

Watchseries; I've seen people her complaining about the pronunciation of the word "Daemon". It is in fact pronounced demon. If you've imagined that differently reading the book, that's not the shows fault.

I've seen people her complaining about the pronunciation of the word "Daemon". It is in fact pronounced demon. If you've imagined that differently reading the book, that's not the shows fault.

His Dark Materials watchseries. I'd say any hype around this series is based purely on the fact that more of the book's content is going to be shown (versus the film) and not about the acting or the portrayal of the ideas in the book (e.g. the intimacy of human-dæmon bond).

Visually it's quite good, and it's nice they're able to show parts of the book that a film wouldn't be able to, but I've found there's something lacking in this series. The acting is a little bit stale and it fails to draw you in and keep you invested. It's just not as gripping as the book. There's also a big verbal emphasis on the significance of dæmons but it isn't physically shown, i.e. there's almost no affection shown between (in particular) the kids and their dæmons, which means the relationship Mrs. Coulter has with her dæmon is shown as less significant than it should be.

Ruth Wilson is so good as Mrs. Coulter!! I hope she gets some recognition in her excellent acting on this complex role.

As someone who has read the books and watched the earlier film, I enjoyed it. However, I was watching with someone who had no prior knowledge of the stories, and had to explain certain elements of the plot, which weren't covered very well.

I despair at some reviewers on here. How can anything be given a rating of '1' especially if they haven't even watched the whole of an episode? The start of any such series will need to build a story and will take a while to develop characters. The scenery and CGI alone must warrant a high rating given the atmospheric mood they create. You just can't please some people who seem to think this stuff is easy!

I enjoyed the first episode and am looking forward to the rest, to watch the story unfold. However, I won't add a rating at the moment because I haven't seen enough to judge it fairly. Ignore the '1' and '2' ratings - I think there's a low IQ convention in town.

To this day I still do not know why the film failed to deliver. It might have been bad timing, or some other dark forces at work. Yet, more than a decade later, His Dark Materials is granted a new chance to acquire a long-promised but deserved status to literature masterpieces who hop into popular media. Lyra's Jordan does exactly what it promises; it sets the foundations to the story, while taking time to describe Oxford - not our Oxford mind you, but one that could exist somewhere else. The college, the Gyptians and their customs, the Cobblers - with Asriel, Mrs. Coulter and, of course, Lyra in the midst of all- have been presented in the best way possible. Sunday nights have just got interesting. Looking forward to seeing how the story unfolds.