(TV SERIES) His Dark Materials Season 1 - Interesting Fantasy Series based on Successful Novels with Beautiful Visual Effects

I never got the chance to watch the first season of this series due to various reasons, but when I saw that the second season was already started like a couple of weeks ago, I decided to watch it so I could catch up soon. It was easy because all episodes are available on HBO Go. Anyway I watched it during the whole weekdays with average 2 episodes per night and finished it before the weekend. Well let's get on with it then.

Brief Story Line

Set in an alternate world where every person has an animal companion called daemon which was actually the person's inner spirit and thus could not be separated, a young orphan girl named Lyra Belacqua (Dafne Keen - Logan, Ana etc) was placed by his uncle Lord Asriel (James McAvoy - Atomic Blonde, IT Chapter two etc) in Jordan College, Oxford since baby. Her daemon was called Pan and she also befriended with a kitchen boy named Roger (Lewin Lloyd). The headmaster of Jordan College (Clarke Peters) later told Lyra to go live with Mrs. Marisa Coulter (Ruth Wilson - The Affair TV series, Saving Mr. Banks etc) who was a famous explorer but not before he passed a mysterious equipment called Althiometer which was said could tell the truth. 

Meanwhile there were some missing children who were kidnapped and Lyra wanted to save them as she suspected her friend was kidnapped by the same persons. She cooperated with some Gyptian people including the leader Lord John Faa (Lucian Msamati), Farder Coram (James Cosmo) and mother of one of the missing child, Ma Costa (Anne-Marie Duff - Before I Go to Sleep, Nowhere Boy etc). During her journey, Lyra became close with an aeronaut Lee Scoresby (Lin-Manuel Miranda - Mary Poppins Returns, Hamilton etc) as well as an outcast armored bear named Iorek Byrnison (voiced by Joe Tandberg).

There was also a mysterious figure from Magisterium (Ariyon Bakare) who had the knowledge of the other world and took a strong interest on a young boy named Will Parry (Amir Wilson - The Letter for the King TV series etc). 

So what would happen to Lyra as she travelled half way across the world to help her friend? You could find out in the exciting first season of this fantasy series.

End of Brief Story Line

Wow, this series was a bit heavy and had tons of cast that spread out through the whole season. But what I like about watching this one was the story telling done in a manner that somehow did not feel too complex and the characters were introduced gradually and did not overwhelm me like other series/movies which tend to show almost everyone even in the first episode. 

I knew that this series was adapted from a trilogy of novels of the same name written by Philip Pullman and there was a 2007 movie adaptation from its first novel titled The Golden Compass starring Nicole Kidman, Sam Elliot, Daniel Craig and Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra. I had seen that film years ago so I did not really remember the plot (probably it was a bit too complicated?) but the thing I remembered the most was the wonderful visual effects, especially of the daemons. Now this series felt like it was properly adapted, as I said above with good story telling (and likely longer duration) which enabled the writers to make this easier to understand as compared to the movie. However, the visual effects of the series were equally fabulous. I was sooo amazed by the amazing effects of the daemons, and basically every visual effects in here.

As a fantasy series, this one was quite complete to my opinion. There was the alternate world, the daemons, the mysterious Dust element and many more, making fans of fantasy genre should be thrilled by it. And I also felt the cast did fantastic job in here. Everyone from the young Dafnee Keen, to the more senior people like James McAvoy or Ruth Wilson and even the boy Lewin Lloyd who played the nice Roger was wonderful. I was so moved by Roger's personal relationship with Lyra especially in the season finale. There were 8 episodes in 1st season with my most favorite, the intense 7th episode. The 8th episode was also entertaining with that cliffhanger ending to make us intrigued with the 2nd season.

Other than the cast awesome cast, I thought the settings were also greatly done. I love the musical score with some lovely background & uplifting music at the proper time. If there were things that I personally preferred was the part about Will which I felt a bit too slow and took too long to see his importance, and probably a bit more intensity, but the rest I thought were just nice.

Overall this was an interesting fantasy series with wonderful cast, absolutely beautiful visual effects and meticulous detailed story telling that would make us enjoy better than the movie. If you are fans of such genre, this one would be a nice option. 

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars