News BBC America Greenlights The Watch, Discworld City Watch TV series

BBC America has announced that they have given a greenlight to The Watch, a new TV series based on the City Watch series of Discworld novels by the late Sir Terry Pratchett. The series is a co-production of BBC America and Narrativa, the company run by Pratchett's daughter Rhianna, and it is being written by The Muskateers' Simon Allen. More details at the link.
Of all the Discworld novels I've read, my favorite is the first City Watch book, Guards! Guards!, so I've been looking forward to this since they first started talking about it years ago.

 

I guess this means I should finally read those. Hell, I need to get back to Discworld in general because I've fallen rather off track...

 

Yeah, I haven't read any in ages either. I've had Men at Arms unread in Nook account for a while now, so this is good motivation to finally read it.

 

Looking forward to this. My favourite DW novels tend to be the Guards ones (though I like the others).

 

There's apparently a whole lot of new about this that I have missed over the last year.
We have our cast, which includes several gender-flipped characters.
Richard Dormer as Sam Vimes
Adam Hugill as Carrot Ironfoundersson
Sam Adewunmi as Carcer Dun
Marama Corlette as Corporal Angua
Jo Eaton-Kent as Constable Cherry
Lara Rossi as Lady Sybil Ramkin
Anna Chanecllor as Lord Vetinari
Ingrid Oliver as Dr. Cruces
Ruth Madeley as Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler
Bianca Simone Mannie as Lupine Wonse
Hakeem Kae-Kazeem as Captain John Keel
The series is going to start filming at the end of this month, and will air next year.

 

New shots released today. It looks, as anything intended as anything close to an adaptation, awful.

Edit: removed naughty word to be polite.

 

It does look rather different than what I was expecting and the description on one site as much so.

 

Link?

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/b...be-nervous-about-the-bbcs-punk-rock-the-watch

 

The very subtle ‘it’s awful’ hints being throw by the Pratchett’s twitter account suggest they too are somewhat unhappy.

 

Some more pics here, but the Guardian one is the one I saw first
https://www.bleedingcool.com/2020/0...-sir-terry-pratchett-adapt-first-look-images/

 

It’s so so bad. But then the casting was the first warning.
This just compounds it.

To be fair, the show itself is now likely to amaze me, because my expectations are so low it would have to dig like a Dwarf on a promise to find them, and probably hit shell before it did. Those poor elephants.

 

I think this is one of those situations where my lack of familiarity with the source material works to my advantage. For better or worse, it reminds me of other BBC fantasy stuff.

Is it just me or does it look like Stephen Lang in that first picture?

 

Wow, now I see why people are upset. That is definitely very different from the books.

 

Wow, those new pictures there are not helping things.
I really wish the people who did the Color of Magic, Hogfather, and Going Postal miniseries had done this. The only one I've read is the Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic, but I thought the miniseries did a pretty good job with them.
If this was it's own thing, I have to admit, I might be curious about it, but as an adaption of the Disworld books, it really doesn't fit. It could still be good, but it definitely doesn't look like the Discworld in the books.

 

That feeling will magnify if you read the guards books, Which it is taken from.

Which you should do anyway, as they are amazing, and ashes to ashes sort of ripped one off.

 

I've read Guards! Guards! and it was my favorite of the ones I've read so far. They are Color of Magic, the Light Fantastic, Guards! Guards!, Mort, and Reaper Man.
This had been one of my most anticipated shows, but these pictures have taken me down to slightly worried. I'm still hoping the writing and acting will be a better fit with the books than the visuals. There is always the chance that this could still be a good series and bad adaptation of the books, but I would really like it to be both.

 

The Watch novels are the ones that pretty much got me into Discworld.

 

We have a new picture of the cast together, including our first looks at Detritus and Lady Ramkin.
According to the article linked to at the end of the Tweet this is going to premiere in January of next year.
I'm still not sure what to make of this.

 

That just cements how much of a mess it is. The dwarf that looks like bloody legolas, is *not* cheery. That is *not* lady Sybil. I won’t even go near the pseudo modern setting, as that is so far down the list of problems with it. It just looks insultingly awful, and missed the point so hard it’s in a valley. And not koom.
It’s kind of upsetting, because I firmly believe the DiscWorld brings a lot of light into our world, and the kind of wide audience a TV show would attract would be an absolute net positive to humanity, let alone the fandom.
But hey look...they have managed to actually sacrifice progressiveness, actual positivity, on the altar of whatever the heck they think they have done. This is now a story in which so many big and small stories that could have made a real positive difference won’t happen

Edit: and just in case the auditors of wrongthink turn up, the Chef! Doctor in Doctor Who recently would have made a fine Lady Sybil. So, that should see the Ali G type accusations off. As to cheery...fuck it. Just read the damn books and see why that doesn’t work, even with the backstory transplant from Carrot. Everything *important* about the characters they have changed has been stripped away.
End of Edit*

There is now no framework for...off the top of my head...Equal Rites or any of the witch books to make sense, no Tiffany Aching either. Now, maybe that’s ok, because this is just the watch...but all the dwarf/troll/human stuff is broken, The Truth...broken, Lady Margolotta...broken, Unseen Academicals..broken. Every last piece of text or subtext to do with race or gender, broken, which is just so many of the stories being worked from it renders the whole show almost pointless. Monstrous Regiment could have been an astonishing piece of television with as much weight and heft as the recent Watchmen series, but now has no framework in the setting of the show. *this is a terrible idea*

On the plus side, the extant Team Pratchett members seem to have rather obviously distanced themselves from it as much as they possibly can. Which is kind of good. I mean it won’t give us a different version any time soon, but it should prevent too much of schism in the fandom, which is something that can easily follow such an occurrence.