His Dark Materials episode 1 review, Culture Whisper
All fiction steps into the unreal, no matter how close a novel, film or show is to reality – but the cross-over into fantasy resembles something more powerful. Screens and pages are transformed into portals leading to fabled imaginations and impossible worlds, embracing escape like a long-lost friend.
His Dark Materials, the new BBC/HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman’s bestselling fantasy trilogy (now ‘equalised’ in his recent Book of Dust novels), recaptures that childish feeling and has a lot of fun running around in it.
The world in His Dark Materials is similar and different to ours, it being a parallel reality and all. The skies make way for massive Zeppelins, armoured bears are negotiated with, and every human is magically tethered to a spiritual animal known as a ‘daemon’. In the alternate Oxford, the academic/explorer/polemicist Lord Asriel (James McAvoy) arrives by Zeppelin and secretly hands a baby to one of the priests at Jordan College; citing ‘scholastic sanctuary’ in a posh English accent.
