His Dark Materials is back for a second go-round: less bloated, more book-accurate, and with more dæmon action than before.
His Dark Materials is back for another season, finally giving fans of Philip Pullman’s book trilogy the adaptation of The Subtle Knife New Line Cinema never got around to after its Golden Compass movie fizzled at the box office. Better late than never.
And The Subtle Knife is where Pullman’s story really gets cooking, so I’m looking forward to seeing what the show does with it. I watched the first season of this series, and I…liked it. I didn’t love it. It was too bloated — especially in the first half — too packed with additional material that did nothing but slow down the lightning-quick pace of Pullman’s book. But it improved as it went along, and “The City of Magpies” doesn’t waste that momentum, giving us a quietly powerful hour that mostly doesn’t mess with a good thing.
The episode doesn’t waste much time in having Lyra (Dafne Keen) and Will (Amir Wilson) meet, the both of them having stepped through windows in reality to arrive at the seaside city of Cittàgazze, which is completely empty of people save for a couple of shifty-looking kids and one dead-eyed man who can’t stop pumping water. Clearly there’s something very wrong with this city — you don’t need to have read the books to be uneasy about the wraith-like “Spectre” that creeps up behind Will at the end — but the show doesn’t dwell on it. Cittàgazze is beautifully designed, a city straight out of a Mediterranean postcard and the perfect place for two wayward kids to lay low for awhile.
I think that’s key to getting this story right: as much as they’ve seen and done, Lyra and Will are still kids, and they accept their weird new reality faster than an adult might, although of course Will is still gob-smacked by Lyra’s talking ermine-squirrel-bird-bug.
Pantalaimon gets a lot of play in this episode, by the way, talking and moving and transforming more than I remember from the first season, pushing the plot forward with his level-headed suggestions. The first season suffered a bit because the show clearly didn’t have the money it needed to effectively render the dæmons — they were there, but not as omnipresent as they are in the books. But this was much better; hopefully it sticks.
Dafne Keen and Amir Wilson have decent chemistry as Lyra and Will. Wilson was great in this role from the jump, easily selling Will’s aw-shucks good heart; I liked him paying for the food even though the store was abandoned and him saving the cat from the Lord of the Flies kids running around the town.
Keen, on the other hand, has been slow to grow into Lyra; I still don’t think she’s quite nailing the almost infuriating passion and drive Lyra has in the books, but she’s solid here in her quiet moments with Will, defiantly making a sucky omelet and coming up with a plan to find a scholar in his world she can ask about Dust. Hopefully, Keen’s new scene partner will up her game a bit.
As Mrs. Coulter, Ruth Wilson doesn’t need to up her game at all. She’s been the acting MVP of the show since Day 1, imbuing Lyra’s mother with a vampy oiliness that’s equal parts delightful and chilling. She rarely raises her voice above a soft simper, but there’s cold malevolence behind her eyes. Every scene she’s in is exciting, whether she’s plotting to install an ally as the new head of the Magisterium or pulling bits of cloud pine from the flesh of a captured witch. She’s the one character I don’t really mind getting extra material, because Wilson it’s just so fun to watch Wilson do her thing.
And then there’s Lin-Manuel Miranda, still doing his best to convince us that he’s a hardscrabble Texan and occasionally succeeding. This was always a weird casting choice, but even if I don’t think Miranda is the perfect pick to play Lee Scoresby (casting Sam Elliot was one of the few things the New Line movie actually did right), he’s giving it his all, and he wasn’t onscreen for long.
Lee meets up with the witches in a scene that felt a little goofy and broad — it’s hard not to feel al bit silly with so many people wear spooky witch makeup in one place — but maybe that’s because so much of the rest of the episode was so grounded. And Ruta Skadi does look pretty cool rocketing through the air.
Not a lot actually happened in “The City of Magpies,” and the ending doesn’t really have any drama to it, but that’s okay: we could use a breather to set up new plotlines, allow characters to get comfortable with each other, and ease the audience back into the world…or worlds, now. And pretty much every scene in this episode was at least based on one from the book. It felt more confident and less bloated than before.
The Subtle Knife is denser and richer than The Northern Lights, so I’m hoping they’ll be no need to filler this season. The His Dark Materials books are good; the show just needs to trust them. And this episode has the second season off to a good start.
Episode Grade: B+
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