Quantum theory is in there somewhere, and mathematics that imply other worlds and dimensions. Visually, the TV series recalls post-war Britain technologically, it is both newer and older: There are metal zeppelins and mechanical “spy flies,” but I don’t remember anyone talking on a telephone. Lewis’ Christological “Chronicles of Narnia,” which Pullman, an atheist, has characterized as misogynist, racist, anti-life and fat-shaming, among other things.) But it has talking animals, too, and balloon rides.Īs is not uncommon in fantasy fiction, it is set in a world like yet unlike our own. (It has also often been seen as a riposte to C.S. Changes should alarm only nitpickers, and additions, mostly in the spirit of the text, are to the good - fleshing out characters and character relationships, converting description to action, and making a workable motion picture out of words on a page.Īs kids’ books go, “His Dark Materials” is grown-up stuff, an adventure story influenced by free-thinking poet-printmaker William Blake, with a title and epigraph borrowed from Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” whose lapsarian argument it inverts.

From what I’ve seen so far, nothing of consequence has been left out. (Only the first four episodes have been made available for review they cover the first half of “The Golden Compass.”) Even with modern blockbuster-on-a-budget technology, one should not expect this to happen again soon, if ever, and fans of the books will be glad to know that care has been taken to get it right this time. Now HBO, in partnership with the BBC, has begun what looks to be, if the weather holds, a new, three-season, 24-hour translation of all three books, debuting here Nov. box office, and plans to adapt the remainder of the trilogy evaporated. It had a starry cast that included Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, with a Kate Bush song over the closing credits, and wasn’t very good at all.

In 2007, “The Golden Compass,” the first volume of “His Dark Materials,” Philip Pullman’s alternate-world, cosmological science fantasy for young people, became a movie.

Beyond the golden compass