Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Voss wrote:

I have to say I'm actually glad no other author has been encouraged/allowed to take up the torch and continue. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't

I'm glad no one has. I utterly loathe this practice.
Even if they're competent (unlike, say, the younger Herbert), they're never on track with the setting and the characters the same way.

Younger authors need to do their own thing, not desecrate corpses.

Pratchett actually had it in his will that his hard drives with all the ideas and outlines he never finished were to be crushed with a steamroller so people couldn't try to do just that. I believe it was his personal assistant who carried out the requested destruction.

There was indeed video proof of Rob steamrolling the harddrives. I'm sure it's still online somewhere..

From a trailer I watched, I'm unbelievably disappointed with this Watch adaption.

I saw the cast list early on and I thought ok, interesting curve balls let's see where they go. The end result? Utter cack and most reviewers have given a similar verdict. God knows why they had to muck about with it.

To be honest as soon as Rhianna Pratchett said it was nothing to do with them then I'd about washed my hands of it. Narrativia are apparently working on a Wee Free Men adaption which should hopefully be good.

Since you mentioned reviews, I went looking: Came across the AV club review. About what I expected (slightly spoilerish)
https://tv.avclub.com/the-watch-will-disappoint-discworld-fans-and-maybe-ever-1845891358

But, I choked on this bit:

self-assured forensics officer Cheery.

That's worse than everything else. Starting with a self-assured Cheery is introducing a completely different character!
I can get along with adapting Cheery to the events she wasn't there for- no problem, and at least get why this Cheery is 'they' instead of 'she,' and sort of why we skip on that journey completely (though skipping a character's personal journey seems to be missing the entire point to me), but to round everything up with also a tall, confident human rather than a nervous dwarf, caught up in cultural expectations and roles? What is left of this character at all?

Also this:

Largely serialized, The Watch runs into a problem that often afflicts its ilk: The need for each episode to have some kind of emotional climax in order to make everything feel complete. In this case, these moments tend to wildly clash with the show’s tone,

Oi. Seriously. Narrative structure is a metatextual element of the universe, fundamental to the source material. As these lackwits have gone back to the well of serialized tripe, with a we-learned-something-today ending every week? Just... get out.

Exactly right?? I mean how hard would it have been to do a series per book? You can easily progress the character ark over the individual series.

Guards! Guards! has a good tv villain (as all the Vimes books do that's entirely the point), it's got dragons in it, what more do people want? That's the mind boggling thing to me, they have zero reason to change Pratchett books to fit in?

 Olthannon wrote:
Exactly right?? I mean how hard would it have been to do a series per book? You can easily progress the character ark over the individual series.

Guards! Guards! has a good tv villain (as all the Vimes books do that's entirely the point), it's got dragons in it, what more do people want? That's the mind boggling thing to me, they have zero reason to change Pratchett books to fit in?

The problem is likely affecting it on many levels. You've got executives with data streams and polls wanting to interject "modern" elements and such so that its "in with the times" in a "its that teacher at school trying far to hard to be in with the cool kids". You've got different executives afraid of presenting some elements incase of any potential insult to a demographic that's large enough to affect marketing and uptake; you've got a writer and a director each wanting to put "their own spin" on things. Heck as its a series it might have different directors and writers for each episode. You've got actors wanting some control over how they are presented; you've got the cutting room. And fundamentally you've got the question of if those in power actually wanted to make the story in the first place; or if this is just the best chance they have to make their own story and they've slapped on another title because it was the only way the investors would sign off on the project.

Muddled in with that might be that the studio has a licence up for expiring and is just throwing whatever they can at it just to keep the licence. A good few horrible films and TV series have been made purely because the licence was nearly up and the investors either wanted to hold onto it (by producing something and extending it) or don't want to waste money that is on the table.



I liken it to the recent Peter Rabbit film by Sony. It is 100% not Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. It's about a rabbit called Peter who happens to have "some" character similarities but beyond that there is no connection at all. But they've got the title and the licence and they got away with it for the free marketing. Heck the first 10 seconds of the intro to the trailer is almost a full middle finger to the idea of adapting the source material.

Well, I guess that ended, then. Seemed an abrupt way to wrap up the 'two episode special,' but I guess since the FX budget dried up in episode one, there wasn't much reason to drag things out.

It was mostly... bland. It really needed cue cards to tell me how I was supposed to react to various events, because apparently some deaths were supposed to be funny and others were supposed to be sad. Some seemed tied solely to the budget...

Interesting use of goblins as the disposable minions that no one cares about, even the heroes. But I guess they're communists, so its fine. But it seems ironic since Snuff exists and the third or so I've read (never finished that one) seemed pretty clear that exactly this sort of thing was objectionable.

Really, really not OK with the visual imagery suggesting that a freshly de-transformed werewolf looks exactly like a rape victim. Just... no.
But she eats people (even if they're 'just goblins') so its funny, right?

Well, I couldn't do it.

I have watched the various trailers, and was tentatively going to co-opt the tv in the house to watch The Watch.. but I read a couple reviews that frankly turned me off.

Someone somewhere mentioned that "Angua after turning from werewolf to human, looked like a rape victim" and that line, I think, was the clincher

I am a HUGE Discworld fan, and The Watch is my favorite Storyline therein. I was determined to view this as a Discworld down another leg of the Trousers of Time..

Anyone able to give a "discworld fan" review or something?

Anyone know if/when/where we’ll get to see it in the U.K.?

 porkuslime wrote:
Well, I couldn't do it.

I have watched the various trailers, and was tentatively going to co-opt the tv in the house to watch The Watch.. but I read a couple reviews that frankly turned me off.

Someone somewhere mentioned that "Angua after turning from werewolf to human, looked like a rape victim" and that line, I think, was the clincher

I did, right above your post.
And yes, it was bad. They shot a scene of Angua coming to consciousness mostly naked in an alley, curled up on herself, shuddering and vomiting.
Actual rapes in movies/shows rarely look this much like a rape aftermath. I don't know why its in here. I don't know why its followed up by jokes about eating sapients (and also cats) and what her crap is going to look like.

I am a HUGE Discworld fan, and The Watch is my favorite Storyline therein. I was determined to view this as a Discworld down another leg of the Trousers of Time..
Anyone able to give a "discworld fan" review or something?

There are definitely discworld elements. Well, references, but it feels like a checklist.

Vimes doesn't feel at all like Vimes, more like a Johnny Depp style madman who mostly doesn't do the right thing, let alone at a cost to himself. He doesn't try to be the straightlaced cop (which means he never fails at it). He's mostly a passive observer, and that feels bizarre.

Ramkin is even worse. She's an activist terrorist reformer (of criminals) who's about 'seizing the power' and is apparently the only person in Ankh Morpokh who cares about 'cleaning up the streets.' With casual killing and/or bizarre reform school lectures at people in chains and terrified of her 'monsters'. She has exactly one rant about mistreated dragons, specifically 'Good Boy,' then pulls him out as uses him as a flame thrower. On people. And we leave the two episode intro with the idea that she has a 'dark backstory' (everyone has one of these) connected to the Watch.

Cheery apparently IS a dwarf after all. This is 'explained' by the pithy line 'We come in all sizes down there.' Which... contrasts very oddly with Carrots backstory about being too big and being sent to the A-M city watch explicitly because of that. Her personal journey apparently took no effort at all, but she of course also has a dark secret.

I could go on, but its more of the same. Discworld element gets checked off, and they move on to some 'vaguely punk' music and get handed the next clue.
Carcer's motivation isn't at all what I expected (and isn't from the Watch books), but it feels like another 'Discworld checklist' feature.

Wow. I know Rhianna said those involved were just doing a job and not to hurl abuse at them and so on, but I'm really struggling to resist. What fethers.

Crispy78 wrote:
Wow. I know Rhianna said those involved were just doing a job and not to hurl abuse at them and so on, but I'm really struggling to resist. What fethers.

The truly sad thing is it isn't really enraging or controversial enough to get worked up about. The Angua scene is horrifying from the perspective of 'why did you do that' but most of the show just isn't even vaguely engaging enough to protest or hurl abuse.
Clues just get dropped off and the deus ex machina card is a painfully obvious shortcut when it comes into play. The first episode is framed as Death showing Vimes his life ('life' having the meaning of 'one incident 20 years before and the current plotline'), but they're not consistent about it and just drop it at the end. With a lot of 'how do you know about the parts you weren't there for?'

The actors don't scene terribly engaged or engaging, and the deaths are pretty horrid. The show clearly expects you to react to some as deeply tragic and others as funny, and others as the 'ooh, wow, action scenes' deaths. Except they don't bother setting up actually caring about the characters in some cases, leave you wondering _how_ they even died in others and the vast majority are just lackeys. Not even dangerous lackeys, more like the 'heroes' are killing Fedex drivers because their bosses are Bad People.

I'm actually surprised the BBC went with a 8 episodes. I don't expect there to be more.

Oddly the Narrativa logo was on the show, presumably a legacy from the very beginning of development.

My wife and I made it through about twenty minutes before deciding we couldn't take any more. It just didn't feel like anyone involved had even read a discworld book, and I wish they'd just not bothered.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Anyone know if/when/where we’ll get to see it in the U.K.?

Seconded. Bit miffed about the fact that it hasn't been released here yet.

I want to at least see it before I can properly slag it off.

8 episodes only is very small by modern standards; sounds like whoever was in charge of the budget and such didn't have a huge amount of confidence in its production to start with. That or the clear separation from the Estate and the creation might have made higher ups cut it short knowing they were too far in to change but not far enough in to outright cancel.

 r_squared wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Anyone know if/when/where we’ll get to see it in the U.K.?

Seconded. Bit miffed about the fact that it hasn't been released here yet.

I want to at least see it before I can properly slag it off.

Can we just not broadcast it here, but say that we did?

But but I want to see it too.

I 100% know its not Discworld now, but I just want to see if its got a charm of its own buried in there or if it really is just a mess. It's important for my ranting that I know these things.

I'd actually quite like to see it, but with the idea of trying to disassociate it from PTerry in my mind to see if it can stand on it's own feet as piece of entertainment.
I imagine that will be quite tough considering that it will be stuffed to the gunnels with references which are in ingrained deeply into my psyche from the originals, but I'm going to give it a go anyway.

Then, once I've watched it and weighed it merits I'm going to give it a good roasting.

As someone who has never read Discworld, I thought it was... Ok? There were no expectations for it to ruin it try to live up to so I didn’t hate it. The setting is neat. The jokes don’t always land. I’ll probably keep watching it but the priority won’t be the highest.

 AduroT wrote:
As someone who has never read Discworld,

Ok now this is a serious problem we need to address - and one which we might be able to resolve too!!

 Overread wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
As someone who has never read Discworld,

Ok now this is a serious problem we need to address - and one which we might be able to resolve too!!

Agreed, there's arguably never a better time to read some Pratchett.

 Olthannon wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
As someone who has never read Discworld,

Ok now this is a serious problem we need to address - and one which we might be able to resolve too!!

Agreed, there's arguably never a better time to read some Pratchett.

Agreed - though then comes the question where to start for there is quite a bit.

A good few people will recommend favourite books or series of books within the greater whole of the work. My issue is that whilst each book is designed to be stand-alone and Terry does use a good number of footnotes and description to help people along with injokes and themes; there are still injokes and themes established right from the very first book, which carry over into the following series. Indeed when read in order of publication you get to see not just each story for itself, but the interconnected elements - the jokes and puns that run one book to the next; events (minor and major) that shape one story influencing another; the characters evolving and changing and indeed the whole setting itself changing and shifting.

Whilst many argue that the first books are not his best, I'd say that they are still worthy and quality reading.


So whenever people ask me, I say go to the start - The Colour of Magic.

 Overread wrote:

 Olthannon wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
As someone who has never read Discworld,

Ok now this is a serious problem we need to address - and one which we might be able to resolve too!!

Agreed, there's arguably never a better time to read some Pratchett.

Agreed - though then comes the question where to start for there is quite a bit.

A good few people will recommend favourite books or series of books within the greater whole of the work. My issue is that whilst each book is designed to be stand-alone and Terry does use a good number of footnotes and description to help people along with injokes and themes; there are still injokes and themes established right from the very first book, which carry over into the following series. Indeed when read in order of publication you get to see not just each story for itself, but the interconnected elements - the jokes and puns that run one book to the next; events (minor and major) that shape one story influencing another; the characters evolving and changing and indeed the whole setting itself changing and shifting.

Whilst many argue that the first books are not his best, I'd say that they are still worthy and quality reading.


So whenever people ask me, I say go to the start - The Colour of Magic.

You know, even PTerry disagreed with starting with his first books. I think I saw an interview about it somewhere, I'd agree TBH. I'd go for Mort or even the Watch itself as a good starter.

Yeah. Guards!Guards! or the first Witches book (Wyrd Sisters, not Equal Rites, which like Light and Colours is a bit rough).
Mort is a bit... eh. I think you need some grounding first, but it might be useful before folks get around to Susan (but considering how little the genealogy matters, I'm not actually sure that's true)

Overread wrote:8 episodes only is very small by modern standards; sounds like whoever was in charge of the budget and such didn't have a huge amount of confidence in its production to start with.

The budget looks like it ran out after episode one.
The _only_ reason a particularly significant event happens is clearly the FX budget.

Seriously, actually spoilers:

At least one episode is called “Ooo”.

How badly could they eff up The Librarian?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
As someone who has never read Discworld,

Ok now this is a serious problem we need to address - and one which we might be able to resolve too!!

I shall prepare......The Chair

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
At least one episode is called “Ooo”.

How badly could they eff up The Librarian?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
As someone who has never read Discworld,

Ok now this is a serious problem we need to address - and one which we might be able to resolve too!!

I shall prepare......The Chair

I'm not sure we need to do that to make people watch this new series.

The Librarian is in episode two, briefly. Evolutionarily digressed ape person who darts around thru shadows and up and down chains. Didn’t show much more than that.

I'm in two minds, personally I would always say to start chronologically and start with Colour of Magic but also I totally get people advising not wanting to start there.

I suppose it's worth saying in this thread start with Guards! Guards! and find out what you could have won with this adaption if it had been done well.

You’ll also need to decide if you want to read the whole of Discworld, or just specific characters/groups.

I tend to find myself skipping Rincewind stories, as I don’t typically enjoy them as much.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
At least one episode is called “Ooo”.

How badly could they eff up The Librarian?

Not terribly badly? But pretty badly.

He's mostly (for his <5 minutes on camera) in poorly lit background shots, with Angua and Cheery afraid of his shadow. They communicate with him in a Deus Ex Machina room that allows everyone to communicate (its an attempt at a translation room, but allows you to 'read' other people so the plot can happen). Its also a canonically (for this show) reason why he 'devolved' into a vaguely 'planet of the apes' style person, still wearing a hooded wizard's robe.

He doesn't threaten anyone or get called a monkey. Doesn't talk (or 'Oook'). He comes off more as the Archchancellor's pet than the Librarian.
He's present but pretty out of shot for the reveal of who stole his book- if he got a reaction to that, I didn't see it.

I almost always will suggest starting with Guards Guards, OR Small Gods.

I feel that Small Gods is one of the best "stand alone" books in the series, and gives you a healthy dose of PTerry's viewpoints without tying the reader to a specific character

I actively buy all Guards Guards, Small Gods, Wee Free Men and Wyrd Sisters books I run across at used bookstores or thrifts, just so I can use them to evangelize