His Dark Materials: Armour Show Only

November 24, 2019 3:59 PM - Season 1, Episode 4

Lyra and the Gyptians arrive in the North and seek the help of the Witches' Consul, Texan aeronaut Lee Scoresby and an armoured bear in service to the town.
posted by KTamas (10 comments total)

*rubs temples*

I rarely wish a show would be slower but that's absolutely the case here. Each episode is just so dense that I can sort of just follow it but it feels like I'm always missing like at least 25% of the information I would need to fully comprehend what's happening, what's the background of things, how things work and so on, and it's frustrating, even though I still enjoy it. I have many, many questions but I'm exhausted just thinking about them and I feel like I should just opt to enjoy it as much as I can and conclude that there is a lot of missing context ~out there~ I will never have (unless, again, presumably, I read the books.)

I don't know the books and I still don't intend to read them but my hunch is that they are trying to cram so much information into so few episodes that the result is this weird mess.
posted by KTamas at 4:03 PM on November 24, 2019

I hate it when book people bring book stuff into the show-only thread but I do so only to say that it's this dense because they're not leaving any context out as far as I can see so far. In the books it just unfolds organically and the narrator can take as much time as he needs. The way they wrote this it's like they don't let one line of dialogue in that isn't incredibly load-bearing because they don't want to leave anything out.
posted by bleep at 6:45 PM on November 25, 2019 [3 favorites]

thanks, bleep, that is actually useful. i got another question: with the way the story is progressing, are they doing a one book - one season model or do you see them breaking the first book into more seasons?
posted by KTamas at 7:28 AM on November 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

It actually looks like they're combining things from different books that take place around the same time so this season may or may not map cleanly like that.
posted by bleep at 8:43 AM on November 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

I just love this show, and don't quite understand why it is not more highly regarded - I had thought it was perceived as being too slow, perhaps not, given KTamas' experience. I did hear the first part of HDM (and all of The Golden Compass) in audio book form which has apparently given me a leg up: I feel I am tracking the narrative of the show better than I did with even the audiobooks.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 1:56 PM on November 26, 2019

bleep, thank you!
posted by KTamas at 5:14 AM on November 27, 2019

People will probably disagree with this, but Lin-Manuel Miranda as an "aeronaut" was one of the most distracting things I've ever seen put on film. He's not breaking the fourth wall, exactly, but the tone is all wrong for this world. I am a great admirer of Miranda as a artist, though I admit I don't enjoy him nearly as much as a performer.
posted by wnissen at 10:20 AM on December 2, 2019 [3 favorites]

I agree that Miranda's character was a bit jarring, largely because he seems to be functioning as Comic Relief Guy in a show that until now has been almost unremittingly somber. I'm hoping that he'll blend in better as the show proceeds.
posted by dfan at 10:32 AM on December 2, 2019

In my opinion, LMM's delivery was so awful that I was groaning every time he showed up on screen. He's just so..... "wink-wink, aren't I cute and clever" all the time. The fight scene was cringe-worthy with the little quips and jokes as he's getting pummeled. It made the show seem cartoon-like, which was very jarring for me. Right now I'm rooting for his character to be eaten by bears.
posted by silverstatue at 7:03 PM on December 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

Oh hey look everybody, the first demon with a speaking role that isn't Pan! Say hi to Hester, everybody!

And yeah, my wife keeps missing bits when she's making holiday plans with the kids, and it doesn't take long for Valuable Plot Information to be lost.

That said, it's weird, 4 episodes into an 8 episode season and it sort of kind of feels like maybe all the setup is finally done and now we can actually start with the actual story and not 60 minute chunks of exposition and scene chewing?

The adaptation hasn't been the greatest, I guess. It's been enough to hold my interest for these first few episodes, but I'm only sort of excited to find out what's next _now_, and enough of the backstory has been clumsily plonked into place that I'm starting to make the connections, although I'll admit I'm 100% lost with Boreal's trips to the Other England. Like, wait, am I supposed to know who he's looking for the Other World history of?

I _do_ think they did a good job of juxtaposing Lyra's competence with the alethiometer versus Creepy Church Dude and Old Professor saying you needed books and years of learning to interpret it.
posted by Kyol at 12:26 PM on December 9, 2019