The Watch update

[Penfold]

I thought it was OK, Rath, but just not my cup of tea.

 

[Tiffany]

Well, I watched the second episode and just lost interest and I'm not fussed about watching the rest. To put this into some sort of context, I managed the first three episodes of 'The Three Musketeers' (coincidentally made by the same people with the same showrunner) and the first six of 'The Walking Dead' (a separate entity entirely and apparently popular).

I've just watched the second episode, what a load of twaddle that is, Death is wrong, The Librarian is totally wrong, never seen such a bad mask & make-up. Was it a cheap production that they couldn't even use CGi. I'll not bother with the rest of it, it's a load of rubbish. Even the cartoon versions of Soul Music & Wyrd Sisters were better than that.

 

[RathDarkblade]

Even the cartoon versions of Soul Music & Wyrd Sisters were better than that.

Hey! Don't compare the cartoons to "The Watch". They mightn't look too flash nowadays, but I thought they got the voices spot on.

And how can you go past Sir Christopher Lee as Death?!

 

[Tiffany]

Hey! Don't compare the cartoons to "The Watch". They mightn't look too flash nowadays, but I thought they got the voices spot on.

And how can you go past Sir Christopher Lee as Death?!

I wasn't comparing them, I said they were better, much better. Death in The Hogfather was spot on too.

 

[Woofb]

Oh, no. Thanks, Tony ... I wonder how many Discworld fans here will watch this, just to see if it is as bad as we all fear?

I just looked at the instagram post Rachel linked to and -- I just ... I have no words.

It's such a shame. Night Watch is my favourite of Terry's "darker" period. When I first heard it was being adapted for TV, I was excited. Now, it feels like they just dumped a big, steaming pile of all over Terry's legacy.

How the hell could they start with Night Watch? It's the one par excellence that relies on understanding the characters layered over time and skipping back and forth through time.

 

[Woofb]

There's plenty of good, fresh fantasy out there. There always was. (So was a lot of bad fantasy.) But the suits in media have refused for decades to allow anything that doesn't match their Joseph Campbellian cultural mythos. Movies have been shoved into the Quest model since Campbell began publishing his monomyth ideas. It is an appealing mythos to begin with or it wouldn't exist, and Western Culture has been conditioned to expect it for generations now. In novels, it can be altered, adapted, or completely ignored, but in film generally, all the differences that add up are ruthlessly removed to force every story into a length of time for people to sit in a theater, and we're back to the same old thing.

The first HP book has the monomyth all over it. Once it was in print and began selling, JKR's amazing skill at media manipulation got the suits interested in fantasy because suddenly they had it shoved in their faces that Fantasy Can Make Money. They had managed to ignore Discworld's success because it grew slowly. A fan of Diana Wynne Jones's work managed to get her wonderfully creative books back in print using the idea that "these are fantasy and will sell just like Harry Potter sold." But DWJ didn't have the clout to keep her stories from being twisted out of recognition, so Howl's Moving Castle took a 90-degree turn and became yet another Miyazaki vehicle instead of the complex psychological portrait it is. Good Omens languished for decades until Neil Gaiman managed to keep enough control over it to keep it fairly true to its origin.

Unless Narrativia can make it happen by keeping control and still getting the funding, I don't want to see more Discworld movies.

[I just reread the first book of Patricia McKillip's Riddle of Stars trilogy, The Riddle-Master of Hed (1976), which is wonderfully creative. Yes, there's a sword, and a birthmark on the hero's forehead, and there are wizards, but it is so very much not just the quest. He is not a quester - he's a questioner, and that's an enormous difference. A movie would lose that totally.]

Agree, DWJ was a much better writer than JKR (prose stylist, writer of magic, close observer of detail, my dim memories of The Riddlemaster of Hed suggest it was very good, and also I wish like all of us that all the money and effort that must have been thrown at The Watch had anything like the depth, wit, feeling, detail, and charm of the originals. It sounds as though grim-dark has been chucked at the wall because GRRM has proved grim-dark sells, while eviscerating everything that makes it what it is.

 

[Who's Wee Dug]

I did enjoy the Chronicles of Morgan trilogy of which R.M.Hed was the first, and the last book I bought was Om Magic.

 

[Woofb]

I've been binge-watching the first few eps.

Unfortunately, they tried to please everybody and probably pleased nobody (unless they were looking for

Just found this.
As you haven't answered our question, may we ask you if it was ex-president of AMC Networks Sarah Barnett ? She recently left the network and had been on record saying "The Watch will be a very BBC America show. As with Killing Eve, we don’t go straight at an (1/2)
Replying to

@dwmoook

and

@MrSimonAllen

.. adaptation – we blur genres, undercut with humor, and hire the most genius writers and actors to create stories and charactAs you haven't answered our question, may we ask you if it was ex-president of AMC Networks Sarah Barnett ? She recently left the network and had been on record saying "The Watch will be a very BBC America show. As with Killing Eve, we don’t go straight at an (1/2)ers that are both entertaining and very contemporary, that say something new." Did she leave AMC in part due to the negativity from Terry's fans?

Add depth? Undercut with humour? They failed to see the depth and humour that was there already, took Colon and Nobby out, and mixed Guards! Guards/Men at Arms with the later/deeper books, running all the way through Night Watch to Thud/The Fifth Elephant. They use "pissed" for angry in a clearly American way in a mostly British milieu. They've got the idea of Death as humanised, but it's humanised in the way of a gritty American cop-show, not the gentle, cat-loving figure of the books. The Librarian as a "monster" instead of an orang-utang. I have no idea why they mispronounce "Havelock Vetinari" with a long first vowel. Even worse, in a world based on systems of Eight/7a (octarine/Octeday/octiron), they pronounce it oct-i-Ron. They fail to get Sybil as both kind enough and actually plus-size, while they go for the lazy Women Are Awesome trope of having conventionally attractive women wielding big weapons.
Richard Dormer is good at the "internal scruffiness field" and I almost like the general post-punk thing, , but was it really necessary to cast a Northern Irish actor for a plot where the villains (Carcer Dun and Lupine Wonse) and the hero are all born in the Shades and thus the equivalent of born within the sound of Bow Bells (that is, Cockneys).
They managed to get the goblins pretty-much my imagining of the grags--harsh-spoken and armored against modern times.

 

[RathDarkblade]

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but ... at this point in time, I'm really not interested in even giving "The Watch" an airing. It doesn't sound like Discworld at all. It sounds like a complete mess.

It's really too bad. It could've been wonderful if they'd focused on what makes Discworld what it is, instead of what the writers/producers thought it should be.

 

[Penfold]

To be honest, Rath, it really isn't like DW (imo) and if the producers had changed the character's names and not mentioned Terry Pratchett at all, we would probably have been none the wiser. It was so far removed, again in my opinion, that I found it easy to forget it was meant to be Discworld while watching it.

 

[RathDarkblade]

Fair enough, I agree with you. I'd be happy to judge it on its merits (if any), if and when it pretends to be Discworld.

 

[Cheery]

I have yet to gather the courage to watch it. The City Watch novels are the single most important series of stories that I was introduced to in my life and I'd be scared to be disappointed even of an accurate adaptation, never mind something that doesn't even seem like Discworld. But maybe I can take it as an alternate universe version? It probably isn't bad as a show, just... not our Discworld, it sounds like.

Tbh when it came out I just turned my attention to Good Omens as a means to ignore the Watch show. But yeah. Should probably give it a chance as a Fantasy CSI? Is it any good, story-wise, ignoring the detour from the source material?

 

[RathDarkblade]

From what I've heard and the images I've seen, it's not even Discworld. Death looks like a kind of troll, Cheery isn't even a dwarf, Sybil uses weapons ... ugh. I'll stick to the books, thanks.

Then again, I haven't watched it (except from short bits on Youtube), and from what I've seen, I have no desire to. Grumble.

Gee, now I feel like Old Man Grump. "When I was your age, dwarfs were short, Death had a scythe, and film producers kept to the original script!" *sulk* "And we liked it that way."

 

[Cheery]

I shall join you in the Old Man Grumpery then, because damn it, I agree!

 

[gaspodescrew]

I've been binge-watching the first few eps.

Unfortunately, they tried to please everybody and probably pleased nobody (unless they were looking for


Add depth? Undercut with humour? They failed to see the depth and humour that was there already, took Colon and Nobby out, and mixed Guards! Guards/Men at Arms with the later/deeper books, running all the way through Night Watch to Thud/The Fifth Elephant. They use "pissed" for angry in a clearly American way in a mostly British milieu. They've got the idea of Death as humanised, but it's humanised in the way of a gritty American cop-show, not the gentle, cat-loving figure of the books. The Librarian as a "monster" instead of an orang-utang. I have no idea why they mispronounce "Havelock Vetinari" with a long first vowel. Even worse, in a world based on systems of Eight/7a (octarine/Octeday/octiron), they pronounce it oct-i-Ron. They fail to get Sybil as both kind enough and actually plus-size, while they go for the lazy Women Are Awesome trope of having conventionally attractive women wielding big weapons.
Richard Dormer is good at the "internal scruffiness field" and I almost like the general post-punk thing, , but was it really necessary to cast a Northern Irish actor for a plot where the villains (Carcer Dun and Lupine Wonse) and the hero are all born in the Shades and thus the equivalent of born within the sound of Bow Bells (that is, Cockneys).
They managed to get the goblins pretty-much my imagining of the grags--harsh-spoken and armored against modern times.

I have yet to gather the courage to watch it.

Woofb, thanks for explaining how you see it. Cheery, I remember a lot of Bowie fans being unable to listen to Blackstar. Delaying the inevitable. (To be fair though, it is a challenging record)

I’ve just finished watching the series with my Mum, who’s a big fan of TP herself. She found the show on iPlayer and subjected me to the first episode. To begin with I was disimpressed. Vimes Irish, mugging outrageously, and looking like Keith Flint after a hard day at work… not to mention the rest of the cast.

But take into account the shock of the new. Plus I was preoccupied with my half pound cheeseburger, which at the time was the most important thing in my life. A few minutes into the second episode, I found myself comfortable with *this* version.

It says at the start, “Based on characters […]”

The show does reflect current cultural/media trends a little more than I find tasteful. But not all of that is unPratchettlike anyway.

Taken on its own terms I think it’s a good show, and I hope they make another series.