SERIES REVIEW – His Dark Materials is the BBC and HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy, in which Lyra (Dafne Keen) searches for her kidnapped boyfriend, makes new friends, and discovers secrets that people want to keep hidden. After the mediocre 2007 film adaptation of The Golden Compass, the series is a landmark adaptation of the author’s original vision, exploring issues such as religious dogmatism and the relationship between man and his inner soul (which is embodied in the form of a small animal in everyone) – while being as spectacular as the widescreen film.

The first season of the BBC/HBO co-production His Dark Materials started in the autumn of 2019, with the first episode setting the right epic tone and stunning visuals for the rest of the series. But while the thematically stripped-down, more youth-oriented 2007 film adaptation The Golden Compass (starring Dakota Blue Richards, Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig) had nothing to be ashamed of in this regard, the real question for the series was whether the showrunners would finally bring the story to life with the same sense of danger, maturity and grandeur that Philip Pullman’s prose provided. In this respect, too, apart from a few storytelling slips and concessions made to keep the story alive on a TV budget, His Dark Materials has been largely very successful in all three seasons.

His Dark Materials – Season 1 (2019)

The series does a remarkable job of moving several different stories forward at once – Lyra’s (Dafne Keen) central mission is to rescue her best friend Roger (Lewin Lloyd) from the clutches of the Magisterium, Mrs. Coulter’s (Ruth Wilson) hunt to reclaim Lyra, Lord Asriel’s (James McAvoy) attempts, Lord Boreal’s (Ariyon Bakare) globetrotting machinations – the series chooses cleverly how and when to highlight these different stories, and by the end, it has woven all these threads into an intriguing web from season one.

His Dark Materials was a big hit in its first season, building a rich, intricate fantasy world in a relatively short space of time – but thanks to the series format, it had much more time to do so. Lyra’s alternate reality of demons, dust, astronauts, witches, armored bears and aleithiometers never crashes in on you too quickly to understand what you’re up against, and some of the mystery that still surrounds the more extreme elements (such as a compass that tells the truth) ultimately makes the series all the more engrossing. His Dark Materials is content to show itself at its own pace, and this kind of confidence keeps the series worth returning to.

What made Lyra’s fantasy world work particularly well in the first season was the inspired decision to pull elements of the story from the second volume of the series, The Mysterious Knife. His Dark Materials makes no secret of the fact that other worlds exist in the same space, at the same time, and that means our “real world” (which is tragically devoid of demons, by the way) is also connected to Lyra’s world. Which brings us to Will Parry (Amir Wilson), the second main character in the series, introduced only in Subtle Knife, who has a huge presence in the first season, which will pay dividends in terms of story economy later on. Will’s struggle to maintain a home life with a mentally ill mother ultimately grounds the story through a series of conversations about souls and prophecy, but in a way that puts these larger conflicts into perspective early in the first season.

Of course, Lord Boreal’s ability to walk between Lyra’s world and Will’s, as well as Will’s obsession with his missing father, John, suggested in season one that Will might have a role in the overall prophecy of the series. As some of the key characters all seemed to have crossed the looking glass by the end of the season finale, how the events of each world were connected was one of the most intriguing mysteries at the end of the first season, to be unraveled as the series progressed.

His Dark Materials is certainly aimed at a much more general audience of youngsters than HBO’s other fantasy epic, Game of Thrones and its spin-off series, House of Dragons, which ended a few months ago, but it doesn’t shy away from its darker moments. It’s a series where children are not safe from soul-destroying kidnappers, where a man can be killed by destroying his adorable animal companion, where a dogmatic and religiously zealous government can turn any violation of human decency into a service to omnipotent power. As in the books, the protagonists in this series are children, but that doesn’t make the world in which they live out their dangerous adventures any less terrifying.

Dafne Keen does an excellent job of rolling through the emotional ups and downs of Lyra’s journey, conveying her good humor and anger with equal conviction across all three seasons. Amir Wilson’s Will Parry is much more subdued: he’s a kid just trying to do the right thing and keep his family together, but as Lyra and Will’s paths cross, as fate would have it, these contrasting personalities can provide great material for further significant interactions between Keen and Wilson.

The adult cast is a fantastic complement to their younger counterparts. Ruth Wilson has the most challenging task, and her intensity continues to make Mrs. Coulter the most formidable woman in the world, whose personality becomes increasingly complex over the course of three seasons. The hypocrisy of Coulter’s treatment of children other than her own made Lyra’s disgust for her even more palpable in the first season, but later on, not only Coulter’s character but their relationship becomes more complicated. James McAvoy, also excellent in complex roles, is brilliant as Lord Asriel, playing his righteous anger and entitlement. His radical motivations and, at times, ruthless actions are accepted partly because McAvoy is committed to making them feel real. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Lee Scoresby makes for great comedy – he’s a genuinely entertaining and less macho Han Solo who genuinely respects Lyra’s balls and cares about her safety.

So, even in its first season, His Dark Materials was a confident, exciting fantasy adventure full of serious threats to the protagonists and stakes that resonated across multiple worlds. Although there were moments when the story’s scope was slightly over budget, it was clear from season one that the BBC and HBO had done an impressive job of giving Lyra’s (and Will’s) adventures the adaptation they deserved.

His Dark Materials – Season 2 (2020)

The series’s second season retained everything that worked in the first season (Ruth Wilson’s incredibly complex Marisa Coulter and her icy, unrelenting rage should be highlighted) and added even more in heart, humor, spectacle, and entertainment. After the first season, the second, perhaps even better, represented the sweeping power of Pullman’s story.

The new season opens with us following Lyra (Dafne Keen) through the cracks of Lord Asriel’s (James McAvoy) into a lush, quiet town populated by terrified children and haunted by mist-like monsters who suck the souls out of adults. Beyond there, he meets a boy named Will Parry (Amir Wilson), from our own Earth, on his own mission: to find the father who abandoned him so long ago.

The second season had to tell an awful lot of stories compared to the first, but also, somehow, the creators understood a little better that it’s not enough just to tell the audience things but to show who these characters are and why their stories are essential.

The Dark Materials of the Lord also took full advantage of the expansion of the series’ locations in season two: the stark, desolate town of Cittagazze, the dark and foreboding forest in which the witches make their home, the swapping of the Oxford version of Lyra for the more recognizable Oxford inhabited by Will, the dead-end streets visited by Scoresby – all richly detailed and beautifully crafted.

Lyra is fortunate to have a friend and partner in crime in young Will, and protagonist Dafne Keene shines when she’s not up against a CGI partner. (No offense, Pan!) The two characters complemented each other nicely in season two – Will’s measured caution is the perfect counterbalance to Lyra’s often impulsive recklessness – and the narrative is all the stronger for their mutual lack of familiarity with their surroundings and mission. Now the audience can learn alongside our protagonists, and His Dark Materials loses the clunky, expository feel that characterized the early episodes. As a result, the narrative also feels much more cohesive than the story threads that play out simultaneously.

In short, in its second season, His Dark Materials is not only a great adaptation of Pullman’s novel, but it has found its rhythm much better. The series is more exuberant, brisk, and epic than ever, with a tightly-paced plot and characters we can actually care about. Are there any weaknesses in season two? Sure; the series still doesn’t really know what to do with its largely interchangeable team of witches, and the Magisterium’s tiresome misogyny is painfully one-note. But for all its flaws, His Dark Materials, in its second season, was even more of a series that remains worthy of the trilogy it’s based on.

His Dark Materials – Season 3 (2022)

In its third season, which concluded on BBC One on 18 December and HBO Max a few days ago, His Dark Materials struck the right balance. Viewers have become familiar enough with concepts like demons to understand, for example, how agonizing it can be when people have to part with them, even for a short time. Without spoiling anything, there is one heartbreaking scene in the series that is guaranteed to break the candle of anyone who tears up at the stories of abandoned animals.

Such details are likely to interest fans of the books – how will the series depict the diamond-shaped skeletal creatures called mulefa? How the story will align itself in space and time as it hurtles across five different universes – turns out to be far less confusing than expected. Mulefas are depicted as long-legged, face-painted tapirs, and although the use of seed pods as wheels is never fully developed, that’s as it should be. The creatures do what they have to do in Mary’s story, showing her not only what dust is, but also how to create community without domination and exploitation – and they are beautiful in other ways.

The third season of HBO’s His Dark Materials also shed more light on the fact that, at its heart and its conclusion, this story is the story of two tragic couples, not one. Readers know and love the relationship between Lyra (Dafne Keen) and Will (Amir Wilson). Thorne, however, has focused the series on Asriel (James McAvoy) and Mrs. Coulter (Ruth Wilson) in this area, and in season three it pays off, deepening the child’s perspective that the books provide.

McAvoy and Wilson are as good as ever. The woman cares for no one but herself (at least until she realises how much she loves Lyra), and the man cares for everyone, which ultimately means the same thing. Pullman’s Asriel is a charming Byronic hero whose revolutionary zeal hides a core of selfishness, but McAvoy’s Asriel is an even more daunting figure. When Asriel reveals to Mrs. Coulter an act of extreme cruelty, even she is shocked at how far he has gone. Asriel is on the right side, a freedom fighter, but his zeal has made him a mirror image of his enemy. (After all, doesn’t the angel, his commander Metatron and the Magisterium think they have humanity’s best interests at heart?)

Great fantasy series from HBO

Throughout all three seasons, the plot of His Dark Materials is a thrilling, dramatic, gripping and spectacular blend of adventure and coming-of-age story; to neglect the latter in favor of the former, under the misconception that the action is more appealing to the audience than the characters, is a mistake that this production thankfully does not make. The three times eight episodes allow for various large-scale, exciting missions, epic battles, and intimate conversations. Whether you know and love the novels or just want a fantasy series that is at once thought-provoking, epic, and a departure from grey reality, you won’t be disappointed with this latest adaptation of Pullman’s novels.

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