His Dark Materials

There is time and space to do them justice and the first episode, in all its steampunkish glory, gave every sign that the potential is to be realised.

In short, this is the adaptation fans have been waiting two decades to see.

Wilson is riveting as the mysterious Mrs. Coulter. ... Keen easily conveys [Lyra's] cocksure spirit and fragile innocence; she is a rare child actor who is fully believable as a child. A caveat: This review is based on the first three episodes only (out of eight), so it’s impossible to say whether HDM will fill fulfill its early promise. (Either way, the show has a two-season order.) For now, though, HBO’s new fantasy saga feels like a page-turner.

The plot of His Dark Materials is a fusion of ripping adventure yarn and coming-of-age story; neglecting the latter in favor of the former, on the misapprehension that action pleases audiences more than character, is a mistake this production does not make. The expanse of eight episodes makes it possible to do justice to both sweeping quests and intimate conversations.

Changes should alarm only nitpickers, and additions, mostly in the spirit of the text, are to the good — fleshing out characters and character relationships, converting description to action, and making a workable motion picture out of words on a page.

It’s a series that’s not perfect and it isn’t the adaptation of the books that we deserve, but it’s good, and that’s a start.

By the end of the four episodes shown for critics, His Dark Materials has started to build up what could be called a head of steam, and even if future episodes never manage to rise above the bar the show sets for itself here, the original novels are strong enough that a faithful retelling of them by competent artists will have its pleasures.

This season, which follows the first book in the series, stays faithful to the novel with some rearranging. But it’s better at rendering the text’s imagery than capturing its tone. It all feels a little safe and sanded down, compared with the dark emotion of the books.

Eventually, near the end of the fourth episode, "Materials" finds its rhythm, and here's hoping that episodes to come will live up to their potential, now that the groundwork has at last been laid. But there are more than 500 TV shows on the air right now, and this one tests the patience of even Pullman's loyal fans.

At the end of episode four, the series has barely begun to unpack its more fantastical elements, instead choosing to draw us into its well-rounded interpersonal relationships and emotional connections, all of which add an extra sense of profundity to an otherwise straightforward coming-of-age story.

“His Dark Materials” benefits from a mesmerizing Lorne Balfe-composed theme song and early on introduces an intriguing element of travel between dimensions but then bogs down as it moves forward to bring all the requisite characters from the book together.

A robust adventure series. [11-24 Nov 2019, p.17]

The complexity has been diluted, the sharp edges sanded down. Thanks to those brilliant flashes, “His Dark Materials” remains a world worth exploring, but whether you’re comparing it to the source material or coming to it fresh, this series is—apologies for bringing in another liquid at this stage—weak tea.

His Dark Materials is much sparser on the character front [than Game of Thrones], and it treats its secrets as hooks in and of themselves, rather than as complicating factors to a story being more clearly told.

This His Dark Materials nails much of what makes the books pop and both the special effects and a star-studded cast led by Dafne Keen and Ruth Wilson are in fine form. What never fully worked for me in the four episodes, out of the eight-episode first season, sent to critics is the necessary feeling of narrative and thematic momentum. It's vastly better than the movie, but neither fun nor smart enough to quite succeed.

His Dark Materials seems like a daemon who hasn’t settled on a form quite yet, and that’s oddly endearing in its own way, too. For now.

It’s a wonderful story, rendered with the liveliness—and the budget—Pullman’s books deserve. Keen’s Lyra has tomboy charm for miles, and her frustration that everyone seems to know more than she does about who she is captures a feeling that, in more abstract form, is universal to her age. Yet the show’s world-building can be messy, as early episodes struggle to establish the conventions of this reality, and watching CGI animals talk plunged me straight into the uncanny valley.

It’s an intensely faithful adaptation of the books, in a way that tends to bog down the suspense and pace of the story. ... The adaptation is, as a result, flatter and more conventional than the book deserves.

Coming on the heels of "Watchmen," it's another notable post-movie effort to build a series around a literary property, yielding (in this case) a paper-thin result.

His Dark Materials’ first episodes are a mixture of unabashedly gorgeous visuals, several strong performances, and writing that demonstrates time and again that it has no confidence in either of those things.