Lyra finds herself trapped in Bolvangar and confronted by the full horrors of what is being done there. Can she escape and free the other children before it’s too late?

After a strangely split episode last week, this time around His Dark Materials chooses to focus almost exclusively on Lyra’s side of the drama, with only brief scenes of the ‘Real’ world and the Parrys which offer no further context to their part in this whatsoever.

The focus on the other world means a lot of the drama works well – Dafne Keen turns in another great performance as Lyra schemes and tricks her way through the hell that is Bolvangar, reunites with friend Roger and plots her (and the other children’s) escape from the awful place. It also gives me (as a non-reader of the books) some issues.

We get some vague infodump on the exact nature of Dust as the show’s antagonists start to explain why it is that they are so intent on splitting children from their Daemons (it’s a ‘greater good’ narrative rooted in a pastiche of the very worst kind of fringe Christian extremism as far as I can make out) but the show still oddly holds back from fully committing on this one, perhaps for dramatic effect, but it feels more like even the writers are starting to wonder just how far they can/should push such an overtly simplistic message. At any rate, the scenes feel a little awkward on a number of levels, and don’t solve my core issue of the Magisterium itself feeling terribly two-dimensional and a little cartoonish. There’s no real justification there for the cruelty they’re inflicting, and mention of ‘sin’ has about the same impact as ‘heresy’ given that the show has done nothing to really explain what the Magisterium is, or what its belief system and faith structure look like. Instead, it just flirts with ideas it has no apparent intention of fleshing out, inviting the viewer to place their own there instead, while giving them little to go on other than a general sense that they’re ‘bad’.

Why this is so frustrating is that it contrasts sharply with the depth and feeling of the performances. Keen is as mentioned fabulous. Anne-Marie Duff steals the entire show for me as Ma Costa, a woman with goodness in her soul but revenge in her heart, and who isn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty in pursuing it. There’s some deeply emotional scenes involving the children at Bolvangar – both those still whole and the ones already split from their daemons, and it can’t help but frustrate to have all this good drama on display and no real sense of the villains being anything more than cardboard cutouts doing all this because they’re just baddies.

Still, there’s some good action, decent performances and a sense that the story is moving onward. I just wish it could get all its ducks in a row and then it could be great instead of merely competent, although perhaps that’s a failing that’s intrinsic to the source material rather than this adaptation.

Verdict: Equal parts emotionally compelling and irritatingly flat. Overall, it’s good, but it continues to succeed where it does in spite of itself. 7/10

Greg D. Smith