His Dark Materials review: Great to look at but doesn’t inspire as much wonder as it ought to

Ruth Wilson is back as the villainous Mrs Coulter in the BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman’s novel series

Ruth Wilson in His Dark Materials (BBC/Bad Wolf)

I could have sworn I was still watching the first series of His Dark Materials (BBC One), but the calendar tells me a year has passed and here we are for round two. Time flies when you’re having fun. Production was already more or less underway when the first one came out, testament to the power of Philip Pullman’s intellectual property. If you’re making the Northern Lights, you give it a bit of welly, so a one-season wonder was never really on the cards, and the question of whether it merits the continuation is moot.  

That may be just as well. Jack Thorne’s adaptation is easy to admire – and I was impressed by the early episodes – but harder to love. In part, this is down to the source texts. Despite the novels’ enormous reputation, they have never inspired quite the same mass devotion as the Harry Potter books. They are too cerebral, polished to too high a gleam. This BBC/HBO version suffers from a similar problem. The sets and costumes and most of the CGI are beyond reproach, the pacing is suitably epic, and it conjures a real sense of otherworldliness. It’s just not much fun. 

With the exception of Lin Manuel Miranda’s Lee Scoresby, the only character who seems to be aware he is in a fantasy drama with talking animals, they are a humourless bunch. It’s understandable in the villainous Mrs Coulter (Ruth Wilson), the Magisterium and the witches, but less so in the young adults who are meant to be our plucky leads.  

In the first episode of the new series, Lyra Silvertongue (Dafne Keen) at last meets Will Parry (Amir Wilson) after they both stepped into the bridge between worlds at the end of the first season. They pitch up in the deserted seaside city of Cittàgazze, a kind of low-season Mediterranean holiday spot. She is as shocked to meet a boy without a daemon as he is to meet a girl with a talking, shapeshifting animal. After encountering a gang of hostile children led by Angelica (Bella Ramsey, as good as she was as Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones), Will and Lyra decide to team up, while elsewhere the god squad prepare for war.  

Aside from a bit of witch torture and a decent brawl, most of the episode is a slow two-hander, a scene-setter that depends on their growing friendship. Keen’s Lyra is a kind of psycho urchin: soulful and serious rather than sparky and impulsive. Wilson’s Will is more sensitive and moral, leaving money when they take things from an abandoned shop, and offering Lyra her choice of bed in the house he has set up in. So much hinges on their relationship that it’s a bit worrying these early scenes lack chemistry. Hopefully they grow into it. 

The daemons never quite replicate the humour and self-doubt they convey in the books, either. It’s a missed opportunity: what better device could there be for representing the novelistic inner voice on screen?  

If this all sounds confused, verdict-wise, that’s because I am. His Dark Materials looks great, it’s robustly made, and there are great actors everywhere, occupying well-built universes. But it doesn’t doesn’t inspire as much wonder as it ought to. Viewers who’ve invested in the series won’t stop now. For a series about magical worlds, aimed at younger viewers, however, there’s not quite enough magic.