His Dark Materials - Crash Course

It's a new age for 90's books after the roaring success of the Amazon adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens, and the BBC is not afraid to take the stage. Philip Pullman's trilogy "His Dark Materials" will be premiering later this year on BBC One (and HBO for anyone outside of the UK) and with it will bring nearly twenty-five years' worth of fans lying-in-wait for a faithful adaptation.

For those not familiar with the series, here's a quick crash course.

What is "His Dark Materials" anyway?

“His Dark Materials” is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman, the first book published in 1995. The series included Northern Lights (or The Golden Compass, if you live in North America/care about book titles having similar theming in titles), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. Two novellas were also written to expand on the universe created by Pullman, and a spin-off trilogy that follows the main character both before and after the events of the original series. There was a brief foray into theatre, with a much more well-known movie adaptation in 2007, and an upcoming TV series by BBC and HBO.

The series follows eleven-year-old Lyra Belacqua, a ward of the fictional Jordan College in an alternate Oxford. A skilled liar and one of the few people who can read the mysterious aleithomometer, she drops everything when her best friend is kidnapped by monsters and ventures across the globe to find him. Throughout her journey, she meets an ecletic group: a scheming conwoman, a despondent polar bear, a rangy hot air balloonist, and a boy from another world entirely.

The world Lyra lives in is much like our own, save for one detail: people’s souls, their very sense of identity, manifest as shapeshifting animals called dæmons that eventually “settle” into a form fitting a person’s personality during puberty.

So, what's this about a TV show?

In 2015, BBC applied for the rights to turn His Dark Materials into a TV series, working alongside New Line Cinemas. It was originally slated for 2017, but pushed back to later this year due to the desire to make it more authentic to the books. It stars Dafne Keen (Logan), Ruth Wilson, James McAvoy, and Lin-Manuel Miranda (do I even need to say he's from Hamilton?)

Wait, what about this movie you keep mentioning?

Oooh, I wish you hadn't said that, fictional reader of the blog post.

An adaptation of The Golden Compass was released in 2007, starring Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra, produced by New Line Cinemas, but due to the fact that they cut out a majority of the more "negative" portrayals of religion (the Church is oppressive and willing to torture children in the name of "science", God is a fake who lied to the world, and original sin is viewed as a step towards maturity rather than a fall from purity), it was made virtually impossible to produce the subsequent movies regardless of the horrible ratings, as The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass both depend heavily on religious themes.

So, where should I start? This all seems a bit confusing...

The obvious choice is to start with The Golden Compass (the book, not the movie), as that was released first and the prequel (La Belle Sauvage, released two years ago) only makes sense when you're aware of Lyra's "destiny". Bookmarks even has the twentieth-anniversary edition available

on their website

!

The movie, also The Golden Compass, would also be a perfectly fine starting point to the world that Pullman built, though it does lack some of the central themes that make the books so gratifying and captivating to audiences. The movie is currently available on Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Ultimately, whether you find yourself entering into the world of daemons, witches, angels, and talking polar bears through the pages of the books or the (hopefully accurate) TV show that should hopefully be premiering on HBO sometime close to this October, "His Dark Materials" is a story that just about anyone can appreciate and love, regardless of age (unless, of course, you're not a fan of religion in your fantasy, in which case, I'd stay away from Narnia as well).