His Dark Materials: Lyra's Jordan (1x01)

Oh boy! It's been a while since I've started reviewing a brand new show. I think Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is one of the finest examples of young adult fiction that has ever been written. So when I heard there was going to be an adaptation of it, I was nervous. But I also knew there was no way it could be worse than the horrific movie, so... what are my first impressions?

Cons:

The young lady who is playing Lyra is doing a pretty darn good job, but there are spots here in this first episode where her performance feels a bit uneven. Most notably in her first scene with Asriel. I felt like she was reciting lines instead of reacting genuinely. This was the only scene where I had that problem, though, and I think overall we've got a strong leading lady on our hands.

So, the Gyptians are clearly analogues for Romani in the real world, and there's absolutely no getting around that association, no matter what we do. On the one hand, I appreciate that this world is a lot more racially diverse, that we've got black men in positions of power, that the Gyptians are not uniformly brown. But there are implications here. It reminds me of The Handmaid's Tale in some ways. They made a decision to strip away the significance of race in the story, but they can't actually fully erase it. It's early days, so maybe we'll get more of this touched on later.

The Daemons are CGI, and for the most part they're pretty good. Or, not good, precisely, but more like - not distracting. When they speak and you see their mouths move, though, that's not great. Also, I noticed that some of the characters' daemons were not really around very much in certain shots. I'm sure I just wasn't paying attention, but it seems like in the scene where Asriel is giving his presentation, I did not see an animal companion for every one of the scholars in the room. The Daemons need to just be a fact of life, ubiquitous in every scene. I also need to get more of a sense of Pan as his own character, with his own personality. I'm sure that will come with time, though.

My only other complaint is a few moments of clunky exposition, but that feels inevitable with a show like this, where you have to set up so much world building in such a short period of time. For the most part, it was done very well and didn't feel too crowded.

Pros:

So far, I'm really pleased with the general atmosphere of the show. The direction was good, the action and the tension-building was nice. I really liked Lyra and Roger running around the school and down into the crypt. That was a really cool opening scene. The world feels lived in, and the perspective remained with Lyra for the most part. It was cool to see "Lyra's Jordan," to experience this fancy and prestigious world through the eyes of a child who is familiar with it as her home.

So far, the casting seems pitch-perfect. I loved McAvoy's Lord Asriel. He's not cruel to Lyra, but he's also not at all warm towards her, in any way that she can notice. There's that moment when he carries her to bed and notices that she has hung up his postcard to her on the wall. There's tenderness there, and complex emotions for sure, and I can see that we're going to get a lot of nuance from this character, through the performance alone.

We haven't had very much time with Mrs. Coulter yet, but I'm pretty pleased so far. Her affection for Lyra is more... cunning, but we see a glimpse of her face when Lyra gives her a hug, and it shows that she too has conflicting, difficult feelings about Lyra being in her life.

While I might question how race is going to fit in with this version of the Gyptians, I really liked the scenes with them. We got to see some of their customs surrounding Daemons and coming-of-age ceremonies. We also get introduced to some characters that are going to be very important moving forward, and it was cool to lay the scene here, in Oxford, before we change settings.

There's a part of me that wishes we could stay at "home base" for longer, but I know that Lyra's journey has got to take off, and so as the episode ends, we see the Gyptians leaving, and Lyra leaving as well, with Mrs. Coulter. I'm excited to get started with the story proper, and I'm impressed by how rich and well-developed this world is, just from the first episode.

In short... so far, so good!

8/10