WiC Watches: His Dark Materials
By Dan Selcke
Photo: His Dark Materials: Season 1.. Image Courtesy of HBO
Episode 4: “Armour”
At one point in “Armour,” Lyra comes to a realization. She wants to draft the fearsome Iorek Byrnison, an armored bear, into the ranks of the Gyptians so he can help them retrieve the children stolen by Mrs. Coulter and her Oblation Board. She and Farder Coram already spoke to the bear, who seems strangely reluctant to leave behind the menial work he’s doing in the ratty northern town of Trollesund, even for good money and a noble cause. Lyra is talking it over with new arrival Lee Scoresby (Lin-Manuel Miranda), a Texan aeronaut and an old friend of Iorek’s. “He’s an armored bear,” Lyra starts. “What could they…they got his armor.”
This happens about 45 minutes into the episode. Do you know how this sequence of events goes down in Philip Pullman’s book? Lyra and Coram visit Iorek, he tells them straightaway that the townsfolk have stolen and hidden his armor, and says that he’ll help with their problem if they get it back. One helpful hint from Lee Scoresby later, Lyra finds the armor using her alethiometer, tells Iorek, and bippity boppity boo, he’s tearing apart soldiers in the town square, which is a cool scene they actually adapt pretty well on the show. Iorek looks fantastic throughout, and downright terrifying when he’s in his armor. Add in a strong voice performance by Joe Tandberg, and you’ve got yourself a talking bear you won’t soon forget.
But getting there…good lord almighty. We have to make room for a bunch of extra scenes with Lee Scoresby, including one where he cites legal codes to a middle manager, because what thrilling adventure is complete without an explanation of Paragraph 4, Subsection C? We need to have a scene where Lord Boreal threatens a priest with exposure of some illicit sex thing, because remember, this is a family-friendly show. We’ve got to follow Mrs. Coulter as she pays a visit to the Magisterium, and in general do everything we can to keep the plot we care about — Lyra’s — from moving forward.
The bloat is absolutely out of control. I don’t know exactly who’s making the decisions to pad out these episodes — the BBC, HBO, writer Jack Thorne, executive producer Jane Tranter — but they have turned a resonant fantasy story full of talking animals and youthful pangs of emotion into the best looking, most boring slog on TV. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think this show should have been made on Disney+, where series like The Mandalorian are allowed to have episodes that run just 30 or so minutes.
LOOK WHAT YOU’RE DOING TO ME, HBO! YOU’RE MAKING ME SIDE WITH DISNEY. I feel filthy.
Image: His Dark Materials/HBO
There were good things about the episode. Like I said, I enjoyed how they rendered Iorek. I also think they’re doing a good job of explaining how Lyra uses the alethiometer, although they missed a bit from the books where Dr. Lanselius gives some details about how they’re made. Lyra’s explanation for how it works it pretty vague on the page, but it translates well, and they were smart to contrast Lyra’s ease of use with Mrs. Coulter having to wait weeks for the Magisterium guy to interpret his own alethiometer. Clearly, Lyra is special.
I have little patience for side dalliances, but Mrs. Coulter’s are consistently the most interesting. I especially enjoyed her scene with Iofur Raknison, king of the bears. Ruth Wilson continues to hold up scenes all by herself.
That said, the show still had some of the same problems it’s had all along. The acting is mostly strong, but Dafne Keen is hit or miss as Lyra. For that matter, Miranda is pretty hit or miss as Lee Scoresby. His southern twang comes and goes, and it’s just hard to think of the guy from Hamilton as a hardscrabble Texan. This was always a strange casting choice.
But mostly it’s the pacing that’s getting to me. There’s so much middling nothing that even the moments that are important don’t land with the impact they should. Take the bit where Lee and Lyra discuss why the bears value their armor so much. It’s a key moment important to understanding what drives Iorek, but it’s not given the focus it needs, so it just blends into the rest of the dreary march.
I did like the running gag about Lyra’s bluff game, though. I want to like this show, truly I do, but at this point I’m losing hope.