In a world like but unlike our own, orphan Lyra Belacqua finds her quiet life at Jordan College thrown into disarray by the abrupt return of her uncle from his adventures in the far north, and the heretical secrets both his contemporaries and the all-powerful Magisterium will go to great lengths to suppress.

I confess that although the Philip Pullman series of books on which this is based is considered one of the staples of young adult genre fiction, I’ve never read them. I did see the Daniel Craig movie The Golden Compass a good number of year ago, and I would be hard-pressed to tell you much about it. This new show then, with involvement from HBO and the BBC, a large budget and an impressive cast list, seemed like a good jumping on point for me. Or so I thought.

It’s not that there’s any particular ingredient of the show which is poor – there’s the aforementioned stellar cast, some gorgeous visual FX and a genuine sense that everyone involved is a massive fan who’s giving their all to realising the vision of the novels. And that’s my issue – having not read them, I often found it difficult to keep up with what was happening on screen, with so many different concepts thrown at the viewer in a world that’s basically like ours aesthetically but has all sorts of weird and wonderful alterations.

The fact, for example, that people’s souls follow them around as talking creatures, compounded further by the fact that for children – such as main character Lyra – these creatures shift form constantly, often from one shot to the next. There’s the concept of ‘dust’ which is rather lobbed at us by way of some incidental dialogue and then expanded on in a quite peculiar speech from Lyra’s uncle about cities in the sky. There’s the unseen ‘Gobblers’, apparently stealing away children and referred to as if everyone knows what they are. It’s all a lot to take in, and the show doesn’t really ever pause to deal with anything, assuming that if you’re watching you’ve read the books and know what’s what, and for me, that was an issue.

Dafne Keen does an admirable job with what the script gives ger as Lyra, Ruth Wilson is dependably brilliant as mysterious adventurer Mrs Coulter and everyone else gives committed, excellent performances, but because the show does so little to introduce the newcomer to everything, much of what they say is just meaningless words that wash over me as I enjoy the admittedly beautiful vistas and the cute little creatures popping up beside everyone. It gives a real sense of a deep, rich mythology without ever really feeling like it’s inviting the non-fan in. It seems to say ‘If you know, you know’ and leave it at that.

I’ll have to see if it deigns to open up further as it goes on, but for me as someone unfamiliar with the franchise, it feels after this opening episode rather like being told an inside joke that I wasn’t in on.

Verdict: Beautifully shot and obviously made by people who love the source material, but not very accessible for those unfamiliar with the franchise. 6/10

Greg D. Smith