His Dark Materials

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.