I had high hopes for this series after watching the initial few episodes, but after watching the first season I feel this could have been much better.
For the most part the acting was good. I particularly enjoyed the performances by Dafne Keen (Lyra), Lucian Msamati (John Faa), Ariyon Bakare (Charles Latrom), James Cosmo (Farder Coram) and Anne-Marie Duff (Ma Costa). I was less impressed with Ruth Wilson as Mrs. Coulter, and Ruta Gedmintas' performance as Serafina fell particularly flat.
While I found the series overall to be much better than The Golden Compass, the final three episodes were, I thought, a bit of a letdown. The main problem was the pacing: many scenes which one assumes were intended to be climactic (e.g. the battle of the bears) didn't have sufficient build-up to really achieve this effect, and the material in the final episode ended up feeling particularly rushed.
This really ought to have been done as a 10 or 12 episode season rather than an 8 parter so that much of the material could have been expanded to give it the detail that it deserved.
I'm really hoping that the next season will not be quite as rushed.
A few comments on previous reviews. First, this series was based on the novel 'Northern Lights'. So was the film 'The Golden Compass'. This series was *not* based on that film.
Second, I'm very confused as to why so many comparisons have been raised between this and Harry Potter or Game of Thrones. Apart from the fact that all three belong to the rather broad genre of 'fantasy' they have absolutely nothing in common (well, with GoT is shares the overly-rushed-at-the-end property, but that's about it).
Finally, 'demon' and 'daemon' are the exact same word, just as 'archeologist' and 'archaeologist' are the same word. They mean the same thing and are pronounced exactly the same way (a few people have brought up the Unix pronunciation. Yes, that's sometimes different, but unix people also think 'gnu' has a hard g and that 'vi' is pronounced 'six' so I wouldn't trust them where regular English is concerned).
For the most part the acting was good. I particularly enjoyed the performances by Dafne Keen (Lyra), Lucian Msamati (John Faa), Ariyon Bakare (Charles Latrom), James Cosmo (Farder Coram) and Anne-Marie Duff (Ma Costa). I was less impressed with Ruth Wilson as Mrs. Coulter, and Ruta Gedmintas' performance as Serafina fell particularly flat.
While I found the series overall to be much better than The Golden Compass, the final three episodes were, I thought, a bit of a letdown. The main problem was the pacing: many scenes which one assumes were intended to be climactic (e.g. the battle of the bears) didn't have sufficient build-up to really achieve this effect, and the material in the final episode ended up feeling particularly rushed.
This really ought to have been done as a 10 or 12 episode season rather than an 8 parter so that much of the material could have been expanded to give it the detail that it deserved.
I'm really hoping that the next season will not be quite as rushed.
A few comments on previous reviews. First, this series was based on the novel 'Northern Lights'. So was the film 'The Golden Compass'. This series was *not* based on that film.
Second, I'm very confused as to why so many comparisons have been raised between this and Harry Potter or Game of Thrones. Apart from the fact that all three belong to the rather broad genre of 'fantasy' they have absolutely nothing in common (well, with GoT is shares the overly-rushed-at-the-end property, but that's about it).
Finally, 'demon' and 'daemon' are the exact same word, just as 'archeologist' and 'archaeologist' are the same word. They mean the same thing and are pronounced exactly the same way (a few people have brought up the Unix pronunciation. Yes, that's sometimes different, but unix people also think 'gnu' has a hard g and that 'vi' is pronounced 'six' so I wouldn't trust them where regular English is concerned).