Tag Archives: His Dark Materials

Job Description: Graphic art director

Job Description,

Gemma Randall, graphic art director on the BBC and HBO’s epic drama His Dark Materials, gives DQ an insight into her role and how she helped to shape the televisual world of Philip Pullman’s iconic literary series.

Among the spires and chimneys of the Oxford skyline, the English backdrop for the BBC and HBO’s His Dark Materials, airships fill the sky of this familiar yet ethereal landscape. In this rich and beautifully realised world, where every person has a dæmon at their side – the animal manifestation of a human soul – there is something to marvel at in every frame.

But look closer, to the portraits hanging on the walls of Jordan College, where the story’s heroine Lyra lives, to the street signs around Oxford and the symbols that adorn the compass-like alethiometer, and you will see the work of the graphic art team led by Gemma Randall.

Gemma Randall

Randall first broke into the industry by joining the props department on Joe Wright’s 2005 film Pride & Prejudice, before working on TV series including Upstairs Downstairs, Doc Martin, The Five and Howards End.

Now as a graphic art director on a high-end, high-concept television drama, she oversees a lot of creative decisions that contribute to the look of the show, from a graphic or pattern to the design of wallpaper or a carpet. With a series such as His Dark Materials, written by Jack Thorne and based on Philip Pullman’s celebrated trilogy of novels, there were no end of decisions to make.

The story introduces Lyra (Dafne Keen), an orphan who lives in a parallel universe in which science, theology and magic are entwined. Lyra’s search for a kidnapped friend uncovers a sinister plot involving stolen children and turns into a quest to understand a mysterious phenomenon called Dust. The cast also includes James McAvoy (Lord Asriel), Ruth Wilson (Mrs Coulter), Anne-Marie Duff (Ma Costa) and Lin-Manuel Miranda (Lee Scoresby).

Taking her cue from the concept art commissioned for the series, which is produced by Bad Wolf (A Discovery of Witches) and New Line Cinema, Randall would oversee the design process for all the graphic elements of the series while ensuring everything fitted into the vision of production designer Joel Collins.

“Joel was keen to make it look like the 1950s, but because we’re not in our world, we’re freer than that, we would incorporate an older 1920s look, or something that looks slightly more Victorian,” Randall explains. “The graphics look like period wartime but we also didn’t want to be rigid and stick to that, because we don’t need to.”

Her main tasks included creating the alethiometer symbols, road signage and the Jordan College crest, as well as the logo for the Magisterium, which is the name given to the church in the series. “Mrs Coulter has quite a lot of paperwork, which is quite key at one point,” Randall continues. “Lyra’s bedroom also has lots of artwork, pictures and texts. There are lots of maps as well.”

Randall’s team faced a varied task, working on designs including the show’s alethiometer

For the alethiometer symbols, Randall sought a fresh layout that leaned away from its design on the book cover or in the 2007 film The Golden Compass, which was based on Pullman’s Northern Lights (known as The Golden Compass in the US) – the first book in the trilogy that forms the basis for the first season of this TV series, which is distributed by BBC Studios.

“We couldn’t just reuse the old designs – we needed something fresh,” she says. “They’re such tiny, tiny things but we see them quite a lot and they’re in the title sequence now! Each one was drawn about 50 times and then we had to work with our fabrication team to get those symbols to work at such a tiny size on the alethiometer itself.

“It’s basically a process of research, finding references and then putting forward your design. Then eventually you’ll come out with something that everyone’s happy with.”

Similarly, creating the Magisterium logo took several weeks. “I did like 50 or 60 of them. There were so many variations,” Randall says. “Now, that shape of the Magisterium badge appears in a lot of the architecture.”

A design for the aerobus featured in His Dark Materials

The show also has its own alphabet, while older street signs use Roman numerals. “We wanted to give the impression it’s another world – Lyra’s world – so we completely changed the way that text looked, which was great and then became a real pain in the arse,” Randall jokes. “It means you can’t use anything real. You have to just make your own of everything – with newspapers and texts, it was Lyra’s-world text. That’s quite a big deal.”

Once a design has been finished and approved, it would be passed to Barry Jones, the head of props fabrication, whose team would build the item on site at Wolf Studios, in Cardiff, Wales.

“It’s really personable – we all work as a team and I can walk down there and have a chat with Barry about how he’s going to do a finish on something,” Randall says. “There are so many different things that we made in season one. We also designed our own computer font for Lyra’s world too and it ended up being used for everything, from the clapper boards to the readthrough scripts.”

The team also had to create fonts and logos for the fantasy drama

Randall came on board the series at the same time as other art directors, by which time the scripts were in good shape and concept art had been commissioned and completed.

The challenge in her role, and for everyone in a creative position, is designing something that’s new, that fits and doesn’t look out of place, she explains. “But the challenge is a fun one. It’s what keeps you going, which I quite like. It’s problem solving.”

Chief among the problems she faced was that of the Magisterium logo, which had to avoid echoes of any other religious emblem, and many others too. “Everything you put down just looks like something else because every single symbol that’s easy to draw and easy to replicate has already been done,” she explains.

“It also needed to look of an age and not be brand-new looking, and not standout but be powerful at the same time, so it’s a really difficult thing to get right. That was something that took a long time, to the point where I was just wanting to see the back of it. Now we’ve seen it on things, on airships and great big buildings, I really like it.”

Randall is now back at work on season two, which was commissioned before season one had finished filming at Wolf Studios earlier this summer. As Pullman’s novels take Lyra on a mission across the cosmos, the story is set to offer Randall new creative challenges that are out of this world.

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Materials world

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Based on Philip Pullman’s acclaimed novels, HBO and BBC drama His Dark Materials aims to set a new benchmark for fantasy series. The cast and writer Jack Thorne reveal their approach to writing and filming the adaptation.

Fantasy novels have always proved popular source material for films and TV series, but the unprecedented success of HBO’s Game of Thrones has sent the genre into overdrive in recent years, with commissioners around the world looking to land their own fantasy epic that can match the majesty of the George RR Martin adaptation.

Recent book-to-screen fantasy titles have included MTV’s The Shannara Chronicles, based on Terry Brooks’ novel series, and Starz drama American Gods, adapted from the book by Neil Gaiman.

Jack Thorne

The streamers have also been getting in on the act. Amazon, which spent big on adapting Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens earlier this year, is taking its spending to the next level with its series version of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Netflix, meanwhile, is taking a major swing in the genre with The Witcher. Starring Henry Cavill (Man of Steel) and based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s series of books, the show will be released later this year.

Now, after Game of Thrones concluded with its eighth season earlier this year and with prequel House of the Dragon on its way, HBO is aiming to set a new benchmark in the genre with an ambitious series adaptation of Philip Pullman novel trilogy His Dark Materials, coproduced with UK pubcaster BBC1.

Debuting in the UK this Sunday and stateside the day after, the first season of the series – a second run of which is already in production – is based on the first book in the series, Northern Lights (published in the US as The Golden Compass).

Unfolding across eight one-hour episodes, made by New Line Cinema and Bad Wolf (A Discovery of Witches), His Dark Materials is set in an alternative reality that features multiple parallel universes, with some worlds more like our own than others. The story centres on a young girl called Lyra, who lives in a world where all humans have talking animal companions known as dæmons, which are the physical manifestation of the human soul.

The first season follows Lyra, who lives with other orphans alongside scholars at Oxford’s fictional Jordan College, as she discovers a secret involving her uncle, Lord Asriel, and the villainous Mrs Coulter. After Lyra’s friend goes missing, she leaves Jordan College and embarks on a dangerous journey, uncovering links between a spate of child kidnappings and a mysterious substance known as Dust.

His Dark Materials stars Dafne Keen, who recently appeared in X-Men film Logan, as Lyra

As adaptations go, there is little fantasy IP more revered than Pullman’s young-adult trilogy. And after the enormous disappointment surrounding the most recent screen outing based on the books – 2007 movie flop The Golden Compass – fans of the novels will be hoping for much better from the BBC and HBO.

The daunting task of penning the adaptation has been taken on by prolific British screenwriter and playwright Jack Thorne, whose most recent TV credits include Channel 4 drama miniseries Kiri and The Accident. The latter premiered on the UK broadcaster last week.

Thorne admits that when he was initially approached about the project, his first thought was to “run for the hills.” As well as being wary of the huge pressure of living up to the source material, he was just months away from the opening of his West End version of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter & The Cursed Child and also had a pregnant wife to think about.

However, clearly a fan of Pullman’s work, Thorne soon changed his mind. “They’re just so perfect, these books, and the idea of anyone else doing them… I would’ve been insanely jealous,” he says.

The hard work then began, with Thorne returning to the trilogy he had previously read twice and consuming all three books over the course of four days. He then met with exec producer Jane Tranter, co-founder of Wales-based Bad Wolf, and agreed to board the project.

From left: Exec producers Dan McCulloch and Jane Tranter, producer Laurie Borg and Philip Pullman

After that, Thorne and Tranter discussed their plans for the series with Pullman, keen to be as faithful to his work as possible. “The important thing we said from the very moment we met Philip was, ‘We want to tell this story,’” Thorne says. “I wanted to disappear; I didn’t want to be visible as a writer. I wanted to represent the soul of the books as well as I possibly could.

“Where we’ve added stuff or changed stuff, it’s been because we either thought that there was something we could do a bit differently to fit the screen a bit more, or because we were aware that we were going on a longer journey with this and maybe there were elements from later in the books that we could bring forward and help make our story sing.”

In one of many revelations offering an idea of the level of perfectionism applied to the project, Thorne says the first episode went through a whopping 46 drafts. “We went down a lot of wrong corridors, and sat in those corridors and wept,” he jokes.

“These books are monstrously good. When you’re given an adaptation, there are two forms. There are ones where you go, ‘There’s a seed of something brilliant here that I can play with and make work.’ And there are other ones where you go, ‘My job is just to get this as close to [the original] as possible on the screen.’

“I do think these books are perfect. And when you’re given perfection, that’s scary as shit.”

Hollywood actor James McAvoy plays Lord Asriel

The cast of His Dark Materials provides further evidence of the scale of this series, with the production able to attract internationally recognisable actors including James McAvoy (Split), Ruth Wilson (The Affair), Clarke Peters (The Wire) and Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator and star of hit Broadway musical Hamilton.

Many viewers will recognise British-Spanish actor Dafne Keen, who stars as Lyra, from her remarkable turn as young mutant Laura in 2017 X-Men movie Logan.

The 14-year-old reveals that she didn’t expect to land the part following her first audition, which took place when her face was swollen from a jellyfish sting. But a subsequent audition alongside Wilson, who plays Mrs Coulter, gave her a better feel for the character. And despite Keen being quite physically different from Pullman’s description of a blonde, curly-haired Lyra, the young actor believes they share many personality traits.

“We’re very nutty, both of us, very curious, quite loud and quite cheeky,” says Keen, who admits to feeling the pressure of portraying such a beloved character. “You tell yourself that you don’t think about that, but you genuinely do think about it. In your brain, you’re going, ‘Oh my God, someone save me!’

“When I was doing it, I was thinking there would probably be people who would be like, ‘This girl’s terrible, I hate her, she’s not doing it justice,’” Keen continues, before adding – like a true millennial – “sorry, not sorry.”

Ruth Wilson gets a chance to play ‘evil’ as Mrs Coulter

Sat alongside Keen is Wilson, who assures her young co-star that her concerns are unfounded. Recalling that she “knew instantly that [Keen] was the one” for the role upon that first shared audition, Wilson says: “She brought such an amazing energy that I thought, ‘I’ve got to put some of that into my performance.’ She’s totally at one with herself and there’s an animal side to her, which has got to be what Mrs Coulter was like when she was young… I’m taking notes from her.”

Keen and Wilson share plenty of screen time, with Mrs Coulter initially presenting herself to Lyra as a kindly benefactor before her true nature starts to be revealed. For those familiar with the books, it’s hard to imagine a more spot-on casting choice for Mrs Coulter than Wilson, who previously excelled as a character with a very dark side in the shape of Alice in Luther, the BBC detective series starring Idris Elba.

Far from being concerned about her “evil” Mrs Coulter frightening young viewers, Wilson identifies a surprising benefit: “My nieces and nephews won’t want me to babysit again, and I’m OK with that,” she jokes.

Revealing that she was instantly attracted to the character, Wilson notes: “She’s so mysterious, unknowable and constantly unpredictable, and that’s why it’s such a joy to play. She’s a master manipulator and she knows what she’s doing. She’s incredibly intelligent and driven and she knows what she wants.”

Despite the well-documented failings of 2007’s The Golden Compass, one area in which it did succeed was in its recreation of Pullman’s dæmons, winning the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

The dæmons were operated by puppeteers during filming and then realised via CGI

Describing the creatures as “fundamental to every scene,” Wilson is confident this production has brought them to life equally well, while Peters, who plays The Master of Jordan College, is full of praise for the artists behind the dæmons. “What was awesome about it was the puppeteers and the way they served us as actors,” he says.

One scene from episode one sees The Master interacting with a dæmon in the form of a leopard. “It could have just been a puppet, but the puppeteer made it breathe and moved it around so it would get comfortable,” says the actor, best known for playing detective Lester Freamon in seminal HBO drama The Wire. “The face of the puppet looks so awesome that you didn’t know whether you were really looking at a leopard or not. So the experience of acting with something that, in the past, would have just been in your imagination was supported by wonderful technicians.”

One of the main criticisms of The Golden Compass movie was the extent to which it shied away from the religious themes in the source material, with Pullman’s trilogy offering a barely veiled criticism of Catholicism.

Executive producer Tranter insists that no punches have been pulled in this adaptation. “We planned to adapt the books as the books were written, so we will go to the heights of the discourse that the books go to,” she says.

“One of the beauties of working for the BBC and HBO is that no-one is fearful. In fact, everyone is embracing of the journey the books go on. You don’t work for the BBC and HBO and do a vanilla adaptation that cuts through the middle and doesn’t tackle, right from the get-go, every note that the trilogy has got to sound.”

The Wire star Clarke Peters as The Master

Thorne, meanwhile, believes the themes of His Dark Materials are now more relevant than ever. Speaking on the day Extinction Rebellion protestors were controversially removed from central London streets, he says: “We live in scary times. There’s so much in Philip’s book that’s about where we’re at now, even more than when he first wrote it.

“The thing that I most admire about his telling is that there’s an obvious story to be told – Asriel’s story – and he doesn’t tell it; he tells Lyra’s. That choice between following the person who’s intent on greatness, Asriel, and abandoning that in order to follow the person intent on goodness, in Lyra, is such a bold and brilliant choice.”

He also compares Lyra to young climate change activist Greta Thunberg, noting: “There are quite a lot of similarities there.”

Sounding wise beyond her years, Keen agrees that her character is a strong role model. “What’s really relevant is that Lyra is growing up in a world of men, in a college, which is basically what is happening to any girl in 2019,” she notes.

“The most amazing thing about Lyra, and what every single girl should take from her, is don’t be scared – go out there and be yourself. Because if you are a force of nature, which is what Lyra is, you will make yourself seen and heard.”

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Jack of all trades

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As British drama Kiri makes its US debut, writer Jack Thorne tells DQ about penning the four-part miniseries and his approach to writing, with upcoming projects including The Eddy and His Dark Materials.

Widely regarded as one of the busiest people working in television, Jack Thorne hardly has a spare moment. So it’s no surprise that when DQ catches up with him, the writer is in New York combining promotion of his four-part miniseries Kiri with preparations for the Broadway transfer of his West End play Harry Potter & the Cursed Child.

Having worked on Skins and the Bafta-winning The Fades, Thorne is best known for collaborating with Shane Meadows on miniseries trilogy This Is England, as well as The Last Panthers, feature film Wonder and an episode of dystopian anthology series Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams.

More recently, he penned National Treasure, which sought to examine the fallout from a public figure being accused of historical sexual assault. But his most recent television outing is Kiri (pictured above), which launches on Hulu on April 4 and examines the disappearance of a young black girl (Kiri) who is soon to be adopted by her white foster family, and the trail of lies, blame, guilt and notoriety that follows.

Jack Thorne

Central to the drama is social worker Miriam (Sarah Lancashire), who arranges for Kiri to have an unsupervised visit with her biological grandparents, leading to her abduction. The series reunites Thorne with National Treasure producer The Forge and distributor All3Media International.

“It was quite stressful,” Thorne says of writing Kiri. “I was so happy with National Treasure and I feel very confident now in it in terms of what it said. So I was very anxious Kiri had something to say and what it had to say was something worth saying. The first draft of Kiri was one of the worst drafts I have ever handed in. [Executive producer] George Faber took me to dinner to say, ‘This is brilliant but a mess.’ He was being nice by saying it was brilliant but there wasn’t anything brilliant about it. Then started a long process of excavation.”

Writing Kiri was particularly troublesome because it was so personal, Thorne explains. His mother was a social worker, while he and his wife have looked into the adoption process, so transplanting those experiences and memories into a television drama proved to be a “scary process,” particularly when the transracial element opened up even more avenues to consider.

He continues: “All you have got to do as a writer is tell the truth but sometimes telling the truth is really tricky, and on Kiri it was. You’re dealing with a wasp’s nest of issues and that wasp’s nest is full of other people’s scars. Episode two sent me mad.”

Faber was also instrumental in helping solve the conundrum of the story’s structure, which shifts perspective between several different characters in a narrative method known as a relay race. “I thought about how to structure it and that idea came about, which is what Abi Morgan did brilliantly with [BBC drama] Murder. If I’ve got another show that can be my model, that makes me feel better,” he says.

Kiri stars Sarah Lancashire as social worker Miriam

Thorne says he works out a lot of knots in the storyline by writing through the problems, though he admits he needs to know the end of the story and what he thinks about it before he turns out a script. National Treasure proved to be an exception to the rule, however, when it came to deciding the courtroom verdict.

“I remember the moment when we realised [central character] Paul was not guilty as being quite late on, but we were talking about how we felt about him all the way through. He was guilty for a long time. It was just in that moment, going, ‘It’s a drama about someone who’s going to be found not guilty,’ and what that means and what that says.”

“In Kiri, it was about who did it and what that means. When it became clear it was about someone’s indignation that someone else wasn’t grateful for what they’d given them and that psychopathic anger inside him, we thought, ‘OK, that’s the truth we’re getting to, so how does every episode ask a question that leads to that ending?’”

Like National Treasure, the themes of blame and responsibility and the role of the media run through Kiri, so although it wasn’t billed as such in the UK (where both shows aired on Channel 4), the two miniseries form the first two instalments of a planned trilogy. In the US, it will air under the title National Treasure: Kiri.

Robbie Coltrane in National Treasure, the first part of a trilogy from Thorne that includes Kiri and an as-yet-unrevealed story

“Hopefully we’re going to get a chance to do a third one, and hopefully [the link] will become clear,” Thorne explains. “It was always in my head as a trilogy of different things. Season one was gender, season two was race. Season three I know what it is but I don’t want to curse it [by revealing too much] and hopefully it will all join together in a way that makes sense for people. I’ve got a story but I’m trying to work out how to make it function.”

Work only seems like work when you’re not enjoying it, and that’s certainly the view Thorne takes, admitting that he takes on so many jobs simply because he likes writing. He points again to Morgan who, speaking on the Royal Court podcast, describes the moment she realised she had taken on too much work was when she had 14 projects on her slate and felt like she was constantly having affairs with each one, forcing her to strip back her workload.

“I don’t feel I’m quite in that place,” Thorne admits. “But I recognise the danger and it’s important not to overexpose. I’m also working out how, in an age when inclusivity is becoming increasingly important, to use my voice to make things better, rather than just propagate a world that is over-dominated by white men. I’m doing a lot of thinking about that at the moment. Visibility has always been very important to me and my logic has always been if I can get those faces and stories on TV, then I’m doing alright. I’m just working all that out.”

For television, Thorne is now developing The Eddy, a musical drama for Netflix with La La Land director Damien Chazelle, and the highly anticipated adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials triology of novels, first announced by the BBC back in 2015. Thorne came on board in April 2016. Season one, based on the first book, Northern Lights, introduces Lyra, an orphan whose search for a kidnapped friend uncovers a sinister plot involving stolen children, all set in a parallel universe where science, theology and magic are entwined.

Thorne also penned The Last Panthers

“We’ve been together working on it for so long now. I’ve written all eight episodes of the first season and am rewriting them now,” Thorne says. “It’s been joyous so far, working out how to do it to make it work.

“There’s huge pressure. My job is to tell Philip’s story as well as I can. In doing so, I have to make decisions [about what to keep or cut out]. There are constant battles in how we tell these stories as well as you possibly can, but we’ve got a lot of time to tell them as well. Hopefully we can please everyone. That’s the aim but I’m tremendously scared.”

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The shape of things to come: what next for sci-fi and fantasy?

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Stephen Arnell casts his eye over the television landscape and finds there are plenty of science-fiction and fantasy series in the works to keep genre fans happy.

At the same time as a tide of comic book and graphic novel TV adaptations have hit the screen, there has been a less trumpeted but increasingly visible trend in series based on ‘hard’ science fiction and ‘serious’ fantasy.

With the recent announcement of Bryan Cranston’s new Philip K Dick anthology series Electric Dreams (produced by Sony Pictures Television for Channel 4), there seems to be an unmistakable head of steam behind adaptations of ‘hard’ sci-fi – coming hot on the heels of Amazon’s critically lauded The Man in the High Castle (also based on a Philip K Dick novel) and Syfy’s miniseries version of Arthur C Clarke’s downbeat Childhood’s End.

This resurgence of more serious-minded sci-fi is demonstrated in the UK, with Channel 4 leading the way with the AMC coproduction Humans and the less viewed, but well-regarded, Utopia.

The alternate-history Axis victory premise of Amazon’s High Castle will be mirrored by BBC1’s upcoming SS-GB, which itself harks back to 1978’s BBC2 production An Englishman’s Castle, which starred Kenneth More as a TV soap writer in Nazi-occupied Britain.

Broadcasters and OTT providers have discovered a new vein to mine, as evidenced by a slew of shows being developed or in production, including HBO’s series version of Michael Crichton’s Westworld (pictured top), best known to older readers from the 1973 movie starring Yul Brynner, James Brolin and Richard Benjamin.

The alternate-history premise of The Man in the High Castle (pictured) is mirrored in SS-GB
The alternate-history premise of The Man in the High Castle (pictured) is mirrored in upcoming BBC series SS-GB

The successful movie was followed by the sequel Futureworld (1976) and short-lived 1980 series Beyond Westworld (CBS), both unfortunately following the law of diminishing returns.

Despite reported production problems, 2016’s Westworld’s stellar cast (including Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris and Thandie Newton) and strong proposition should guarantee high initial sampling when it debuts this autumn.

Westworld creator Jonathan Nolan (co-writer with his brother Christopher of The Prestige, Interstellar, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises) is also apparently developing a series version of Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation trilogy (also for HBO), which is surely a prospect that will have sci-fi fans salivating.

Back in 2009, Sony reportedly tried to crack the novels with director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, White House Down) attached, but when the project stalled, HBO stepped in to acquire the rights.

Along with JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Frank Herbert’s Dune, Foundation was regarded as ‘unfilmable’ due to its epic scope but, following Game of Thrones’ success, epic is something HBO can confidently handle.

Other sci-fi classics reportedly in development include Stephen Spielberg’s Amblin’s take on dystopian Aldous Huxley novel Brave New World and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion, produced by aficionado Bradley Cooper.

Both have been ordered by Syfy, which is also teaming with Battlestar Galactica writer/exec producer David Eick for the series version of Frederik Pohl’s 1977 Hugo and Nebula award-winning Gateway.

On the SVoD front, Hulu has given a straight-to-series order for a 10-part adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a feminist story set in a grim US of the future, ruled by a Ted Cruz-style totalitarian Christian theocracy, starring Elizabeth Moss (Mad Men, Top of the Lake).

Syfy miniseries Childhood's End
Syfy miniseries Childhood’s End

A movie of the novel was released in 1990, boasting an all-star cast that included Robert Duvall, Faye Dunaway and Downton Abbey’s Elizabeth McGovern, but the film suffered from script problems and was generally felt to be an interesting failure.

Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, Noah) is said to be developing a TV series with HBO based on Atwood’s post-apocalyptic novel trilogy Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam, set in a world where most of humanity has been wiped out by a pandemic and the survivors fight to find a reason to continue.

Back in 2011, there was talk of a remake of Ray Bradbury’s 1980 movie The Martian Chronicles (starring Rock Hudson), but this appears to have been abandoned. The revival of interest in the genre may see it resurrected, though.

US cable channel Spike has commissioned Kim Stanley Robinson’s hard sci-fi classic Red Mars for a 10-episode series debuting in January 2017. Dealing with the human colonisation of the Red Planet, the series features Vince Geradis (Game of Thrones) as exec producer.

And speaking of Mars, the daddy of all sci-fi stories – HG Wells’ War of the Worlds – is currently being developed by ITV-owned Mammoth Screen for an ostensibly authentic period version of the classic novel, scripted by Peter Harness (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, City of Vice, Doctor Who).

Neil Marshall (Game of Thrones, Dog Soldiers, The Descent) is on board to direct, while reports earlier this year of Poldark star Aidan Turner taking the lead role of the narrator have since been denied.

HG Wells features as the protagonist of ABC’s Time After Time (based on Nicholas Meyers’ 1979 movie), which involves the author travelling from Victorian England to the present day. Kevin Williamson (The Vampire Diaries, The Following, Dawson’s Creek) is showrunner for the series.

Sky's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Likely Stories
Sky’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Likely Stories

Although Robert A Heinlein’s Starship Troopers was successfully transferred to the cinema screen by Paul Verhoeven in 1997, it remains doubtful whether a TV version of his most famous work, the controversial 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land (once promoted as “the most famous sci-fi novel ever written”) will ever see the light of day.

In terms of the serious fantasy genre, the BBC’s upcoming version of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy should benefit from having writer Jack Thorne (The Last Panthers, Skins, The Fades) guiding the show, which will hopefully avoid the pitfalls of 2007’s movie adaptation The Golden Compass and maintain more of an adult tone.

Scheduling and advertising will be important for the series, as the excellent Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell suffered from misleading promotion, which gave the impression of a Harry Potter-style fantasy – and aired on the wrong channel, BBC1, when BBC2 would have been far more appropriate.

Fantasy legend Neil Gaiman has certainly been a busy lad, with no less than four TV adaptations of his writings in the works, as well as his mooted big-screen version of Gormenghast, which was last seen as a BBC2 series in 2000.

Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Looper) was due to direct a movie version of Gaiman’s Sandman, but that recently hit the buffers.

First up is American Gods for Starz in the US, which has an impressive cast including Ian McShane, Peter Stormare, Jonathan Tucker and Crispin Glover.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Would BBC1’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell have fared better on BBC2?

Sean Harris (Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Jamaica Inn, The Borgias) has since left the production to be replaced by Pablo Schreiber (Orange is the New Black, The Wire) in the role of troubled Leprechaun Mad Sweeney, with Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, Pushing Daisies) as showrunner.

Gaiman’s Anansi Boys, which occupies the same fictional universe as American Gods, was optioned by BBC1 in the UK back in 2014, while his anthology Likely Stories has been commissioned by Sky Arts in the UK, featuring a cast that numbers Johnny Vegas (Benidorm, Ideal) and industry veteran Kenneth Cranham (Rome, War & Peace, Layer Cake), with a score by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker.

Directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard helmed and co-wrote the critically acclaimed 2,000 Days On Earth, a portrait of Aussie Renaissance Man Nick Cave.

Good Omens, Gaiman’s end-of-the-world collaboration with the late Terry Pratchett, is also being considered by the BBC for a miniseries, while Lucifer, the Fox show based on Gaiman’s character from Sandman, has recently been renewed for a second season.

Other fantasy projects with adult themes on the horizon include NBC’s Midnight, Texas (due to be transmitted this autumn), based on the novels by Charlaine Harris (True Blood), and the BBC’s The City and The City – Tony Grisoni (Red Riding, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Southcliffe) developing China Mieville’s cult novel about the cities Beszel and Ul Quoma, which occupy the same point in space and time.

And last, but by no means least, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, said to be the highest-selling serious fantasy novels since The Lord of the Rings, are rumoured to be under consideration by Sony for either AMC, Netflix or Amazon.

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Thorne gets stuck into Dark Materials

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Jack Thorne
Jack Thorne

What a month for Bristol-born screenwriter Jack Thorne. After picking up no fewer than three Bafta nominations for his work on The Last Panthers, This Is England ’90 and Don’t Take My Baby, Thorne has now been given the task of adapting Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials for the BBC.

He called it an “honour and privilege” to be selected for the job, adding: “The His Dark Materials trilogy are vast and glorious books full of beautiful characters. I’m going to work as hard as I can to try and do justice to them.”

Thorne first came onto the TV scene around 2007 when he wrote an episode of Shameless. This was followed by shows such as Skins and Cast Offs before he joined forces with Shane Meadows on the This Is England trilogy. Titles like The Fades, Glue and The Last Panthers confirmed his status as one of the UK’s most in-demand writers – as did a couple of Bafta wins in 2012.

And it’s not just the TV industry that wants him. He has also written the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and the screenplay for upcoming Warner Brothers movie The Sandman.

Thorne’s involvement has been given the thumbs up by Pullman, whose Dark Materials books have been published in more than 40 languages and sold 17.5 million copies.

Thorne is well-known for his work on the This Is England franchise
Thorne is well known for his work on the This Is England franchise

“Jack is a writer of formidable energy and range, and I’ve greatly enjoyed talking to him and learning about his plans for bringing His Dark Materials to the screen. I’m certain he’ll do a superb job and I look forward to seeing the whole project develop as he shapes the story.”

Thorne’s versatility and voluminous output are both hallmarks of his remarkable career to date. His latest TV project, for example, is National Treasure for Channel 4.

A four-part production starring Robbie Coltrane, Julie Walters and Andrea Riseborough, it examines the impact – both public and private – of accusations of historic sexual offences against a fictional much-loved celebrity.

The quality of the cast attracted to National Treasure is a good indicator of Thorne’s pulling power as a writer. So expect to start seeing some big names getting attached to the His Dark Materials project, which is being made by Bad Wolf.

In other news this week, filming has begun on season six of the BBC’s hit drama Call the Midwife. Commenting on the show, its creator, writer and executive producer Heidi Thomas said: “My passion for the world and characters of Call the Midwife grows stronger with each passing year. Every season brings new stories, new challenges and new triumphs – yet each one feels like a return to a much-loved home, and season six will be no exception.”

Philip Pullman has given Thorne his seal of approval to adapt the His Dark Materials trilogy
Philip Pullman has given Thorne his seal of approval to adapt the His Dark Materials trilogy

That Thomas has had such success with Call the Midwife is no real surprise when you look at her track record. Having come up through the theatre, she began the transition to screenwriting at the start of the last decade.

Her work on Call the Midwife was foreshadowed by BBC drama Lilies, about three girls attempting to make their way in the world in Liverpool in the 1920s. However, it was Thomas’s work on period drama Cranford that really caught the eye, winning her an RTS Award in 2008. Next came a moderately successful reboot of Upstairs Downstairs before the launch of Call the Midwife confirmed Thomas’s reputation.

The new run will start with a Christmas special set in South Africa before returning to the East End of London. “As the team settle back into Poplar, we’ll see them grappling with all the contradictions and opportunities of the early sixties – the beacon of the pill, the shadow of the Kray twins, the lure of independence and the call to duty,” Thomas said. “And time and time again, in an age of change and danger, we will be reminded of the simple power of love.”

Still in the UK, indie producer Playground has announced two more book deals, after last month securing Patrick Kingsley’s book The New Odyssey – The Story of Europe’s Refugee Crisis.

Filming for the sixth run of Call the Midwife is now underway
Filming for the sixth run of Heidi Thomas’s Call the Midwife is now underway

The first is Penguin Random House Books psychological thriller The Widow. Written by Fiona Barton, it follows the wife of a man who is accused and eventually cleared of kidnapping and murdering a child. The second is non-fiction book Jeremy Hutchinson’s Case Histories. Published by John Murray and written by Thomas Grant, it details the life of the celebrated barrister who played a role in numerous controversial UK court cases involving figures such as Great Train Robber Charlie Wilson.

Sophie Gardiner, creative director of Playground UK, said of the titles: “Though one is fiction and the other is non-fiction, both feature striking central characters caught up in stories that speak to the key issues of our time and should appeal to a wide-ranging audience.”

In the US, the big story of the week is that feted showrunner Terence Winter has left HBO’s lavish music industry drama Vinyl ahead of season two.

Winter has a superb track record, previously working with HBO on series such as The Sopranos and having written the screenplay for Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (Scorsese is also involved with Vinyl). However, there is a general feeling that Vinyl didn’t quite hit the mark. So HBO and Winter have parted company after creative differences about how the show should get back on track.

Vinyl's next season will be overseen by
Vinyl’s next season will be overseen by Scott Z Burns and Max Borenstein

HBO said: “As we head into the second season, we have decided it is an appropriate time to make a change in the creative direction of the show. We have enjoyed a longtime partnership with Terry Winter and we look forward to our next collaboration with him. We are pleased to welcome Scott Z Burns, executive producer and showrunner, and Max Borenstein, executive producer, as the new team helming the show.”

Burns is best known for The Bourne Ultimatum, though more recent credits include 2016’s Deep Water and 2011’s Contagion. Borenstein, meanwhile, wrote the screenplays for the most recent Godzilla film and the forthcoming Kong: Skull Island. He was also involved in Fox’s ultimately unsuccessful TV version of hit sci-fi movie Minority Report.

Finally, more than 90 writers from Mississippi including John Grisham and Donna Tartt have signed a statement calling for the repeal of the state’s new anti-gay religious freedom bill.

“Mississippi has a thousand histories,” says the statement. “But these can be boiled down to two strains: our reactionary side, which has nourished intolerance and degradation and brutality, which has looked at difference as a threat, which has circled tightly around the familiar and the monolithic; and our humane side, which treasures compassion and charity and a wide net of kinship, which is fascinated by character and story, which is deeply involved in the daily business of our neighbours. This core kindness, the embracing of wildness and weirdness, is what has nurtured the great literature that has come from our state.”

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Whose Dark Materials?

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Philip Pullman is looking forward to seeing his work brought to life on TV
Philip Pullman is looking forward to seeing his work brought to life on TV

The BBC has greenlit an eight-part drama series based on Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, which comprises novels Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

Commissioned by BBC1 controller Charlotte Moore and BBC drama commissioning controller Polly Hill, the adaptation will be produced by Bad Wolf – the new prodco from Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner’s – and New Line Cinema, which is making its first move into scripted TV. The show will be made in South Wales and Los Angeles.

One thing we don’t know is who will write the show. Screenwriters are being talked to right now, so this week we’re speculating wildly on who might get the job.

Adapting His Dark Materials (which has sold 17.5 million copies and been translated into 40 languages) is undoubtedly a great gig for any TV writer. But it will also be a tough challenge.

Not only is Pullman’s trilogy a complex and controversial piece of work (which may not sit comfortably in the BBC1 schedule), it has the shadow of a failed movie hanging over its head in 2007’s The Golden Compass, so there is no question it will require a proven talent to pull it off – someone who can capture the dark, subversive nature of the work without diminishing its sense of mischief, romance and adventure.

Jane Tranter (left) and Julie Gardner of Bad Wolf
Jane Tranter (left) and Julie Gardner of Bad Wolf

If their diaries allow it, the obvious choices to handle the project would be Russell T Davies or Steven Moffat, both of whom have exactly the right credentials for a project of this kind. Moffat, immersed in Doctor Who and Sherlock, might not be a realistic option right now. But both writers are close to Tranter and Gardner and know what it takes to create shows that can work on both sides of the Atlantic, which will be a significant consideration for New Line Cinema.

On the face of it, both writers perhaps seem a little too slick for Pullman’s sombre fantasy world, but their sense of fun may be exactly what’s required to avoid the fate of The Golden Compass movie.

Tranter and Gardner won’t want to stray far from this kind of quality. But if Davies and Moffat aren’t available then they may look to other writers who have developed their credentials in and around Doctor Who, Torchwood and Sherlock. Again it depends on diaries, but you would have to look at the likes of Mark Gatiss (Doctor Who, Sherlock) – who might even bag a part in the show.

Strong alternatives with proven showrunner ability include Chris Chibnall (Doctor Who, Torchwood and Broadchurch) and Toby Whitehouse. Whitehouse would be an interesting call; a long-time friend of Gardner, he has shown the same kind of versatility as Gatiss and Chibnall with credits such as Doctor Who, Torchwood, Being Human and The Game.

His Dark Materials has been adapted for several forms, including the theatre...
His Dark Materials has been adapted for several forms, including the theatre…

If you’re looking for someone with recent credentials in adapting awkward novels then Peter Harness may be an option. Aside from his BBC1 adaptation of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, his credits include Wallander and City of Vice. Interestingly, he is also now part of the Doctor Who star chamber, having written episodes for the last two seasons (including The Zygon Inversion, co-written with Steven Moffat).

Other in-demand writers that you ignore at your peril include Jack Thorne (The Fades, The Last Panthers), Hugo Blick (The Honourable Woman) and Howard Overman (Misfits). And to balance the fact that this is an all-male list, you’d have to consider talents like Abi Morgan, Sally Wainwright and Sarah Phelps – though this certainly feels like more of a project for graduates of the Doctor Who school of creative writing (which means we should also consider Neil Cross, whose credits include Spooks, Doctor Who and detective series Luther).

Tranter and Gardner might, of course, head in a completely different direction. With so much movie talent coming over into TV, why not go for Alex Garland or Jane Goldman – Brits who are pre-eminent in their field? Or maybe it requires the involvement of Nicholas Wright, the playwright who successfully adapted the novels for the National Theatre.

...for the big screen, as the critical and commercial flop Golden Compass...
…the big screen, as the critical and commercial flop Golden Compass…

The innate Britishness of the Pullman project (its location, its core characters and its brooding discontentment with Catholicism), combined with the film’s underperformance, probably militate against the use of a US writer. And it looks like the kind of project that would suit a writer-auteur rather than a writers room.

But US writers who Gardner and Tranter have worked with recently include Glen Morgan (Intruders), David Goyer (Da Vinci’s Demons) and John Shiban (Torchwood: Miracle Day). So if winning the US market is a big priority then any of these might be a credible screenwriting solution.

All of which is, of course, pure speculation – and there are plenty of other scribes who could handle the brief. It’s important, for example, to keep in mind that the chosen writer will need to pass muster with Pullman, not just Tranter and Gardner.

...and a graphic novel
…and a graphic novel

In the meantime, all we really know so far is what the production team and author have told us. Commenting on the project, Pullman said: “It’s been a constant source of pleasure to me to see this story adapted to different forms and presented in different media. It’s been a radio play, a stage play, a film, an audiobook, a graphic novel – and now this version for TV.”

Although the BBC announcement was only made this week, there is already a sense that His Dark Materials is better suited to TV than film (echoing other complex fantasy works such as Frank Herbert’s Dune).

Pullman, who will executive produce, seems positive about the medium’s potential to tell his story: “In recent years we’ve seen the way that long stories on television, whether adaptations (Game of Thrones) or original (The Sopranos, The Wire), can reach depths of characterisation and heights of suspense by taking the time for events to make their proper impact and for consequences to unravel. And the sheer talent now working in the world of longform television is formidable.

“For all those reasons I’m delighted at the prospect of a television version of His Dark Materials. I’m especially pleased at the involvement of Jane Tranter, whose experience, imagination, and drive are second to none. As for the BBC, it has no stronger supporter than me. I couldn’t be more pleased with this news.”

Northern Lights is the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy
Northern Lights is the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy

Tranter added: “It is an honour and a joy to be part of the team responsible for bringing Philip Pullman’s trilogy of novels to the BBC. Ever since they were first published, these books have been a huge influence on so much of my thinking and imagination and it is enormously inspiring to be now working on them for television adaptation.

“The broad horizons of television suggests itself as the best of vehicles to capture the expansiveness of the story and worlds of Lyra and Will, and I am looking forward to seeing how Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass will occupy their place in an audience’s imagination across many episodes and seasons.”

Tranter’s use of the word ‘seasons’ as opposed to ‘season’ is, of course, illuminating. The books aren’t Game of Thones-like in length, so it’s doubtful the three of them could justify more than a series each (unless Bad Wolf goes down the interminable route taken with JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit). So any writer who is thinking about coming on board is probably looking at a three-year commitment (assuming the TV show doesn’t suffer the same fate as the movie version) – which isn’t too bad. That said, they should probably read this article in The Guardian to remind themselves why the film version didn’t work.

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