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https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2018/his-dark-materials

This is good news. The film adaptation from a few years go -- The Golden Compass -- clearly failed to establish the franchise on the big screen.

The BBC production will be less lavish with effects or big name stars, but it is much more likely to be able to complete the whole trilogy.

That's a heck of a cast for a BBC show. Keen and McAvoy as Lyra and Asriel are great shouts, and Lin-Manuel Miranda as Scoresby is inspired.

No work yet on who's voicing Iorek... Crap as the film was, McKellan was great there.

I'm assuming from this cast that the series is only going to cover the first book, unlike Strange and Norrell where they crammed all three sections into one series. Fine by me, there's enough there to make sure it doesn't drag even with slower pacing.

Certainly looking promising. The cast all look about right to me.

The His Dark Materials trilogy is my favourite book series. I am glad they are getting another shot at an adaptation (but the books will always be best ).

Glad they are getting another shot at it; a TV Adaptation should work better than a film - at least they can pace it a lot better! The film we - eh - I have to say even on a purely action film level it failed. Jumped around way too much and honestly I don't even remember the lead characters at all.

After the trainwreck of a movie, I'm reasonably confident that a TV adaptaitin can do better - I think the Movie suffered a lot with trying to simplify a lot of the nuance, and replacing it with not terribly impressive spectacle and cliche.

Also, Nicole Kidman as Ms Coulter was one of those casting decisions that have everything to do with the actor/actress being a "Big name" draw, nothing to do with her suitability for that role. Honest to god, who read the trilogy and thought "Wow, Nicole Kidman would be a perfect fit!".
In the interests of full disclosure, I think Kidman is rubbish in everything I've seen her in, but still!

Come to think of it, I thought Daniel Craig was rubbish as Asriel as well, so I'm Interested to see McAvoy's take.
Again, I hope that a TV show can put some of the complexity (and therefore interest) back into those key characters.

A TV show can do it because they can spend more time on it.

If it's a typical BBC production it will be 8 or perhaps 12 episodes long. Each episode will be 45 minutes, perhaps an hour.

Thats a minimum of 6 hours available, which is nearly 3x a feature length film. More more space to develop the plot and characters.

Yep and hopefully they stick closer to the books themes and plot rather than diverging and watering down the religious aspect and focus (even though it was never anti-religious just anti-organised-religion )

TV series are really coming into their own for producing books into motion events now. Especially the more fantasy and sci-fi series that are far more demanding on visual effects and visual creations. Films are fantastic and often have far better visual effects; but their time constraints mean that stories get re-written; designed and chopped and changed to fit into a tiny timeframe.

I always took it not so much as anti-religious per se, but more anti-authoritarian; I.e. you should all make up your own mind and not just do what someone tells you, particularly when it comes to moral issues.

Of course, organised religions tend to be big on the “do what we say, because we say it, or go to hell (literally)”, so take the brunt in the books.

It’ll be interesting to see if those messages come across a bit stronger in a British production; religion isn’t as big a box office consideration here as in the states.

I hope they stick to the source material - there used to be some great (if sometimes rather "flat acting) adaptations that stuck close to the source material and showed that whilst books and TV are different mediums you don't have to change huge amounts to put something on the screens. Heck there are a trio or so of old animations of Discworld books which almost follow the story to the letter (they are let down somewhat by some flat delivery of their lines, but they are very faithful to the source material).

Looks great. I'm sure the BBC will stick to the source material much more than the film.

The casting looks pretty epic. Can't wait for this!

I'm looking forward to it, even though I'm on the other side of the pond