The Watch

[Ruthie]

It’s on I-Player.

But it’s awful. They’ve murdered and conglomerated and fiddled with Pterry’s genius and made it rubbish.

Sybil Ramekin is NOT supposed to have a tiny waist FFS. And Cheery Littlebottom has a BEARD!!!

[Paul]

Hmm. I have just watched the first episode and it didn’t seem very familiar to me. It doesn’t feel like the stories I remember.

[Kim]

It was clearly never going to be Pterry's Watch, but has it also failed to be any good in it's own right (like the Dirk Gentley series mostly managed)?

[spesh]

As I said back in September 2019 when the adaptation (FCVO) was announced:

The BBC has announced the leading cast members for a forthcoming adaptation of PTerry's Night Watch books.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/bbcstudios/2019/the-watch-cast-richard-dormer

Varying mileage has ensued: https://twitter.com/BBCAMERICA/status/1171786597504888833

Some of the casting is spot-on, but I do wonder just how loose an adaptation it's going to be when the BBC post stuff like this:

Marama Corlett will play the mysterious Corporal Angua who is tasked with Carrot’s training and keeping the rookie alive.

Is there another edition of Guards! Guards! that I don't know about? And then there is this... interpretation of Carcer:

Sam Adewunmi will play the wounded, wronged Carcer Dun, out to hijack destiny itself, take control of the city and exact a terrible revenge on an unjust reality.

"Wronged" is not a word I would have associated with Carcer, not from what I can recall of reading Night Watch.

TBH, I am not hugely optimistic about this. 

In January last year, the late PTerry's daughter Rhianna Pratchett and Rob Wilkins, his assistant and keeper of the PTerry Twitter account, both cast cumulonimbus-level shade by posting links to Ursula Le Guin's legendary take-down of the SYFy Channel's appalling adaptation of her Earthsea books.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/jan/17/discworld-fans-are-right-to-be-nervous-about-the-bbcs-punk-rock-the-watch

Rhianna Pratchett gave The Watch a kicking later last year, saying the adapatation "shares no DNA with my father’s Watch”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/12/bbc-the-watch-shares-no-dna-with-terry-pratchett-work-daughter-rhianna

FWIW, the Graun had reported in April 2020 that Terry Pratchett’s production company Narrativia had announced a new development deal to create “truly authentic … prestige adaptations that remain absolutely faithful to [his] original, unique genius”.

The deal will see Motive Pictures and Endeavor Content team up with Narrativia, which Pratchett launched in 2012, to make several series adaptations of the late author’s fantasy novels. There are currently no details of which books the partnership will tackle, though many of Pratchett’s books have been adapted before: Sky has dramatised Hogfather, The Colour of Magic and Going Postal; Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters have been turned into animations, and Good Omens, starring David Tennant as the demon Crowley and Michael Sheen as the angel Aziraphale, was recently aired on Amazon Prime and the BBC, to positive reviews.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/28/terry-pratchett-novels-faithful-tv-adaptation-discworld

Speaking of Good Omens, a second series has been announced - apparently Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman spent a night at a convention 30-odd years ago talking about a sequel to Good Omens, and some of the ideas did actually make it into the first series.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-57650826

[Mr Larrington]

The DingoVision adaptations were pretty good, in this Unit's op!on.

[Tim Hall]

rld

Speaking of Good Omens, a second series has been announced - apparently Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman spent a night at a convention 30-odd years ago talking about a sequel to Good Omens, and some of the ideas did actually make it into the first series.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-57650826

Apparently John Finnemore is working with Neil Gaiman on the script.
https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/bbcstudios/2021/good-omens-blessed-with-sequel-season/

[Ruthie]

See, if they’d done a really good adaptation of one of the books, and kept it true to the original, I would have willingly - avidly! watched more of them. But they have amalgamated the Watch books into one rubbish … thingy. Mess. It’s a mess.

[fd3]

I always assumed that the settings was more medieval/Tolkien than ... whatever the Beeb punted for.

[fd3]

So, didn't think the first episode was good, but from the start of episode 2 I realised that it's not very TP in style.

(click to show/hide)

The troll wouldn't have died poignantly, it would have become some sort of joke

[pcolbeck]

I've been watching this and am about four episodes in. As an filmed version of the original books its dreadful. But if you forget about the books and take it on its own merit its quite good fun.

[Si]

Every DW adaptation to filum that I've seen has been (probably deservedly) panned by most viewers on the reviews that I have read.  I can't remember seeing one that I thought was good.

This is where The Watch works for me.....because it's not a straight knock up of a DW book/story I'm not comparing it to an original so much.  Thus, while it's certainly not as enjoyable as reading the books, it's a lot better than most of the stuff on TV at the mo.

[T42]

"Forget the original" is probably what the perpetrators are hoping you'll do, the disrespectful bastards.