His Dark Materials - Episode 5: The Lost Boy
HIS DARK MATERIALS - BBC + HBO
After a relatively muted prior two episodes, The Lost Boy is just what the generally entertaining and well-meaning but sometimes meandering adaptation needed to kickstart the show into second gear. While it hasn't gotten up to full speed yet, it's a promising return to form which should bring viewers firmly on side with some action and the introduction of a key character.
Big budgets have never been a selling point for most BBC dramas but it's evident the cash injection from HBO has served the drama well, with some of the most impressive visual effects seen on satellite television in what feels like a lifetime. Production values are high and feel particularly so in this episode, with pretty mountain vistas and harsh, bleak scenery commonplace, well-shot through luscious — if occasionally uninspiring and tepid — cinematography. It substitutes well for something the show has struggled with from its pilot: world building. While the show may have perhaps unknowingly been presumptive and too short-sighted in terms of how many people have read the books, the emphasis on journey in this episode patches over some otherwise holey world building.
The acting is consistently strong, with a more assured Lyra and generally great voice acting from the entire cast of daemons. The weakest link — a huge surprise — is Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose presence can be grating and inconsequential, which may have been mitigated if the show had waited just a little longer to introduce his character. Miranda adds a quirkiness to the role but is noticeably overdoing it. Where he should be peppering his performance lightly with this aspect of his personality, there is no moderation or restraint, making him feel more like a stereotype than a fleshed out character.
Continuing the ostensible obliviousness of the script to the average viewer's actual level of familiarity to the books, the character of Will Parry is introduced confusingly and with a lack of context, his importance to the story insufficiently defined for now, making the viewer's time following him feel frustrating and wasted. However, it seldom feels hollow as the episode retreats from the barrage of exposition splurged on screen in previous episodes.
Compared with those previous two episodes, this felt miraculously paced — no characters having to carry the burden of the narrative on them for too long — with droopy exposition cast aside. The series is at its best when the epic fantasy essence of the novels shines through and there are moments in this episode which manage to recapture the magic of the pilot, something which the show started strongly with and hasn't managed to achieve since. It ended well, sustaining momentum to its last, setting up what promises to be a tightly written, action-heavy next episode and it comes not a moment too soon.
His Dark Materials has often felt like it has been coasting on the edge of greatness, with almost every individual aspect successful in its own right but never successfully marrying them all together to create a cohesive whole. It might not always juggle them all as well as the show's high ambitions would require but this episode goes at least some way in bridging that gap.
Whilst it marches to the beat of its own drum, His Dark Materials does so more out of its own unmindful myopia than out of any conscious subversion or even awareness of its own trappings. It doesn't marr the show much in the long run but what this does do is add a layer of ironic unpredictability to a show which so often retreads the footsteps of its source material, although whether the final three episodes can maintain the upward trajectory of this one remains to be seen.
His Dark Materials is released on HBO and BBC every Sunday and Monday, respectively.