All 3 Seasons Of This Fantasy Series Are Perfect From Start To Finish

While HBO’s His Dark Materials only lasted three seasons, this means that the acclaimed Philip Pullman adaptation also managed to produce no bad episodes throughout its run. Sometimes, fantasy TV shows need to stray from the stories set up by their source material in order to succeed. For example, SyFy’s The Magicians benefited from diverging from the books.

The show jettisoned the elements of the novels that felt overly familiar to fantasy fans by the time the show came out, resulting in a series that remained true to the spirit of the books but still felt original and fresh. However, this isn’t always the case for every screen adaptation of a fantasy novel.

Infamously, the ending of Game of Thrones saw the series stray far from the source material for the first time in its run, and the result was generally seen as a disaster for the HBO series. To make matters worse, only a few years later, another HBO co-production would emerge that remained more faithful to its source material throughout.

His Dark Materials Has No Bad Episodes

Based on the Northern Lights trilogy by author Philip Pullman, the 2019 series His Dark Materials was co-produced by HBO and BBC One. The series follows Lyra Belacqua, an orphan who learns that her parents aren’t really dead, but are instead on opposing sides of a religious war that is taking a turn toward the existential.

Lrya’s father, James McAvoy’s Lord Asriel, is attempting to mount a resistance against the all-powerful Authority, while Ruth Wilson’s villainous Ms. Coulter represents the Authority in Lyra’s life. Lyra’s comparatively comfortable life in the fictional Jordan College, Oxford, is thrown into disarray when she is sent to live with Ms. Coulter, but instead becomes obsessed with finding her missing friend.

These seemingly disparate plot threads eventually come together in a twisty story that involves alternate realities, parallel universes, and even a literal battle between Heaven and Earth. While the ending of His Dark Materials is epic in its scope, the show’s story up to this point moves seamlessly between intimate character drama and broader political machinations.

The show’s peerless pacing means that the plot of His Dark Materials never drags, even though the show could easily become bogged down in the alternate history of its reality. Lyra’s world eventually links up with our reality when she meets her eventual love interest, but the show drip-feeds these revelations in a way that is neither too ponderously slow nor too rushed.

How His Dark Materials Fixed The Movie

Although His Dark Materials is nigh-on perfect, the show isn’t the first attempt to bring Pullman’s acclaimed novel trilogy to life onscreen. In 2007, at the peak of the post-Harry Potter deluge of children’s fantasy franchises, The Golden Compass aimed to cash in on the popularity of the books with a blockbuster movie adaptation.

Although the movie did gross a respectable $372 million on a budget of $180 million, The Golden Compass garnered largely negative reviews upon its release. Despite the presence of stars like Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman as Lord Asriel and Ms. Coulter, Twilight: New Moon director Chris Weitz's adaptation was accused of softening the story to make it more kid-friendly.

Indeed, it is hard to see Dafne Keen’s version of Lyra alongside the heroine of the earlier movie and not immediately notice this difference. The show’s heroine is more belligerent, short-tempered, and sometimes outright unlikable, whereas her movie counterpart is a more agreeable, conventional, and frankly uninteresting young adult protagonist.

Similarly, the elements of the book trilogy’s story that could be challenging are filed down to feel less divisive in the movie, which results in a muddled plot with little to say. The books and HBO’s TV show are fiercely critical of the institution of organized religion, whereas The Golden Compass attempts to sidestep anything so divisive in favor of an overly familiar "Chosen One" plot.

His Dark Materials Ended Perfectly

Fortunately for fans of the books, the 2007 movie was thoroughly redeemed by the superior series. HBO’s version of His Dark Materials started strong by immediately capturing the tone and feel of the novels, which balance gritty realism and child-friendly fantasy elements in their pacy, unpredictable plot.

Moreover, the show had the opportunity to tell its self-contained story before His Dark Materials ended, making the fantasy masterpiece one of the genre’s most cohesive small-screen offerings. Thanks to their large budgets, many fantasy shows are canceled early, and even those that aren’t can run into problems with their source material, as proven by Game of Thrones.

In contrast, His Dark Materials was a rare instance of a series that managed to faithfully adapt an entire trilogy without either padding out the story with filler or condensing its action to the point of unrecognizability. In the process, His Dark Materials became a must-watch classic of the TV fantasy genre.