His Dark Materials: Lyra's Journey (and how the show is struggling to take us with her)

The following spoils Episode Two of His Dark Materials: 'The Idea of the North' and contains very very light hints regarding the plot and themes of all three books. If you are caught up on the show so far, though, there shouldn't be any surprises in this write-up.

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Anyone who has read His Dark Materials knows that, for an epic retelling of Paradise Lost where Armoured Bears slap the stuffing out of one another, it starts realllllly slowly. Pullman's defining opus opens with decanters of Tokay poisoned and then summarily tossed onto the floor; with a lot of old people getting very upset about the word 'Dust' and with our main character, Lyra, spending most of her time wondering why grown-ups won't just talk straight with her. It's the equivalent of Harry Potter being taken off to Hogwarts, but we don't mind because Hogwarts (and in this case, armoured bears) are only a handful of chapters away if we keep going. On TV, though, those bears are a lot further off: about four weeks in total. I liked Episode One of His Dark Materials, but I couldn't help but wonder how the filmmakers were going to cope with this slow build in momentum.

The answer, it turns out, is to fast-forward right into Book Two, but in doing so, I worry that the show may have served itself a more complicated issue than it had when it was simply dragging its feet.

In Episode 2, ‘The Idea of the North’, we’re shown a lot more of the character 'Lord Boreal'. After he's walked around Jordan College for a bit (and spoiled a minor twist from The Subtle Knife in the process), Lord Boreal walks through a shimmering sliver in the air and out into our world, confirming what the title screen (and all your friends who won’t shut up about Amber Spyglass) have been hinting at for ages: that His Dark Materials will take place across multiple universes. It’s a game-changing twist that affects every single character in the show, as well as our understanding of the in-universe rules. It was also doubly surprising for me, given that we're not supposed to know about Lord Boreal, or the parallel worlds, until around the end of Season One.

I can take a stab at the various reasons for why the show runners made this change. A big one is probably that when Lyra first meets Boreal in The Subtle Knife, she doesn't recognise him, which means Pullman doesn't let us in on his identity straight away. That obviously isn't going to work in a visual medium, so the show is just being upfront about this early on. That decision also fits the episodic format because HDM seems to be taking the Game of Thrones approach to storytelling, where you check in on several characters rather than only sticking with the one. So, given these very valid reasons, why do I feel as though Boreal's scenes are a bad move?

Radiotimes put out a pretty great little opinion piece on the episode that talks about how getting to the Boreal stuff so quickly robs the story of its suspense. Northern Lights barrels towards the alternate world with all its might; it is the absolute end goal for that story and so everything in it is chasing after Asriel and his operatic crossing into the sky. Seeing Boreal stroll casually into our Oxford six episodes prior does rob some of the mystique and majesty from that moment.

But, watching Episode Two play out, I think that feeling of deflation and awkwardness comes down to a far more fundamental problem. By showing us what Boreal is up to, the show has unmoored us from Lyra's point-of-view. Which is a problem, because every next step within Northern Lights is motivated by Lyra's increasing discovery of each new piece of information and how it re-contextualises her place in this universe. We can see it most clearly in all of her scenes with Mrs. Coulter, as each time we return to them another layer of Marissa's character is peeled away and each successive scene becomes increasingly uncomfortable, culminating in Lyra's decision to run away.

That process of discovery is at the heart of the His Dark Materials series; both in what Lyra learns about others and in the self-discovery that comprises the books’ core thematic message (I’m trying to be vague here, but let’s just say for now that Philip Pullman loves himself some Original Sin). For that to work, we need to be on Lyra's wavelength, discovering things alongside her. But the decision to show us Boreal's activity does the exact opposite: it gives us a revelation that will be crucial to Lyra later on, but not at the moment. And given that Boreal spends most of the time just being cryptic, there isn't a tangible reason why we need to know about it yet, either.

It raises an interesting point regarding adaptations that we rarely talk about: structure, and how the order in which information is revealed in is just as important as what information is actually being revealed. Even rereading The Prisoner of Azkaban recently has been eye-opening in understanding just what can and cannot work in the translation from script to screen. Whole chapters worth of plot developments are condensed into single scenes, whilst the final forty pages are elongated into an hour’s worth of footage. David Heyman, producer of all eight Harry Potter films, talked about how, as the books became longer, the filmmakers were forced to limit the story purely to Harry’s pov in order to keep a handle on the ever-growing source material. Heyman even talks about how preserving the spirit of the book was more important to him than simply copying the book onto screen. That decision, as much as it may irritate book-purists to hear, was likely the reason the films lasted as long as they did, allowing the momentum of JK’s prose to survive on film whilst keeping the story largely coherent.

At first glance, TV doesn’t appear to have that kind of constraint. It’s lengthy and extravagant and there’s all the room in the world to include that bit of lore minutiae that will make all the fans on reddit squee. It's an idea that more and more shows are jumping on board with: even the recent adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events front-loaded the relatively simple earlier books with reams of backstory and detail that didn't come into play until halfway through the series.

But if the age of Netflix has taught me anything, it’s that TV doesn’t always work well when paired with excess and needs momentum just as much as film does. It's why, despite Netflix's own originals, the most watched content on the service is frequently either The Good Place or Friends. It’s why I’ve checked out of umpteen new prestige shows after a handful of episodes, but have somehow watched the original Avatar TV show three times in one year. As interesting as it is to watch Lord Boreal walk into our world, that choice makes it feel like the show is taking a step away from Lyra and, by extension, a step away from me, as she pushes harder and harder towards a goal I’ve known about since Episode Two. Sometimes shows can mine real tension by putting their audience ahead of their main, but to reiterate the RadioTimes article from earlier; I'm not sure what tension there is to be mined from showing us things that won't affect Lyra for another year.

Where the producers of Harry Potter sought to preserve the connection between main character and audience above all else, HDM is threatening to take that connection and drive a wedge straight through the middle. And if the show is going all-in on the books in a way the film never did, that severance will deflate all the later moments like a balloon.

Near the end of Episode One, the Master of Jordan College tells the Librarian (and by extension, us) that Lyra is going to have to take a journey. But right now, it seems reluctant to let us truly join her.

Other Notes:

• Big Fat Disclaimer: I'm writing this hours before Episode 3 airs, which of course raises the obvious point that a lot of what I've said could be rectified or disproven in the next six episodes. It's normally why I don't do many episode-by-episode reviews as the show is going out. However, this one episode bugged me more than most do - possibly because I not long ago finished the books - so I wanted to get it out of my system.

• By the way, that minor twist that Boreal spoils during his walk around Jordan College is the reveal that Grumman's frozen head is not actually Grumman's. I'm not really sure what it's doing here now, but it also makes me realising that I've been mispronouncing 'Grumman' in my head the whole time I read the books (Me: Gruh-man. Show: Grew-mun). It's Hermione all over again.

• Allow me to briefly pour some extra salt on this sizzling hot take: These opening two episodes have been directed by Tom Hooper (The Kings Speech, Les Miserables), which had me worried at first (I'll spare you the rant here) but I actually think they might be his best directed work. The exception, however, is in how he films the Boreal stuff, i.e. without flair. I talked to someone after the episode and they didn't even realise that it was our world being portrayed for a minute or so. For such a colossal part of the mythos, it wasn't exactly a very awe-inspiring moment. Nice portal, though.

• So, I missed out on Avatar: The Last Airbender TV show when I was younger but hot-damn is it fantastic. Don't let the live-action film or your aversion to anime-esque animation put you off: it rules.

#hisdarkmaterials #harrypotter