The Watch (BBC America's Discworld Adaptation)

We finally have some news about The Watch, the BBC Adaptation of the Discworld City Watch series.

Previously, we learned it would have an eight-episode season written by The Musketeers and New Tricks Simon Allen and executive produced by Luthers Hilary Salmon and former Doctor Who producer Phil Collinson.

Now, we know it will be directed by Craig Viveiros and we have a ton of casting information:

• Richard Dormer as Sam Vimes
• Adam Hugill as Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson
• Jo Eaton-Kent as Constable Cheery
• Marama Corlett as Corporal Angua
• Lara Rossi as Lady Sybil Ramkin
• Sam Adewunmi as Carcer Dun

Carcer is being described as "a mysterious figure wronged by injustice seeking to change not just his own destiny, but the fate of Ankh-Morpork and everyone in it, as vengeance." Which sounds like they are taking liberties, but I'm okay with that. It sounds like an intriguing mix of the City Watch books, most notably Night Watch.

Plus, Constable Cheery is being played by a non-binary actor!

Edited by alliterator on Sep 11th 2019 at 9:20:17 AM

The biggest liberty is that Lady Sybil is now, apparently, a vigilante.

And that Carcer is not just an abject nutter. His defining trait was that he had no REASON. He just WAS. His whole character was an inversion of Valjean - no redeeming traits, just thrust into a weird role by opportune chance.

Also, Angua is now Carrot's "guardian and mentor".

I'm glad something is being done, but they didn't need to reinvent it - you could have adapted all the books in order, turned each one into a decent crime miniseries a-la comedic Luthor.

My other concern is that all the Pratchett adaptations end up with the actors thinking they're in a complete comedy, so overacting and satire. Charles Dance played Vetinari well, Michelle Dockery did Susan very well. But everyone else is hamming it up like the last slice in the butchers window.

They are going for the Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency route, where you have the same characters and tone, but the plot is all changed. But I'm less concerned with the plot than with the characters because I think Pratchett made the characters so great that I don't think they should mess with them too much.

Agreed. I'm perhaps being too curmudgeonly but I think that the stories are good enough and work well. And could be adapted fairly easily!

Sybil, for example, is a fantastic female character - independent, authoritative, able to direct the plot by herself.

The casting is great, though, so I have some hope.

So Carcer is like the Sherlock Moriarty, Mr "I'm so clever so I can do anything I want"?

Edited by theLibrarian on Sep 11th 2019 at 6:23:43 AM

Same.

It feels weird for them to go to Carcer as the big villain for the Watch's turnaround from their decline because I don't remember him having much connection to the Watch as much as he did with Vimes.

And even his connection to Vimes was little more than "I randomly murdered a bunch of your men, isn't it funny how you can't catch me because we fell in a time portal?"

I don't mind them changing Carcer — he wasn't even really a character in the book, just a random serial killer — I just hope that they don't change too much of the other characters.

(Carcer being an inverted Jean Valjean works because Night Watch is essentially the story of Les Miserables if they had help from a policeman from the future, but since I don't think they are doing that, it wouldn't really work anymore.)

I just realized the perfect actors to play Nobby Nobbs and Fred Colon: Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

That would be excellent, count me in :D

New cast members announced

• Vetinari is played by Anna Chancellor
• The Archchancellor is played by James Fleet
• Doctor Cruces is played by Ingrid Oliver
• Keel is played by Hakeem Kae-Kazim
• Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler is played by Ruth Madeley
• Wonse is played by Bianca Simone Mannie

Huh. Gender-Flipping a lot of them. Not that it's a terrible idea; Discworld has always been a bit male-dominated. Not too bad, but enough to be noticeable.

I am still a little leery about this due to the big change with Carcer, but I'm willing to give it a chance.

Oh interesting. That's four characters they've genderflipped: Vetinari, Doctor Cruces, Wonse, and CMOT Dibbler. I can see them doing it doing it to Cruces and Wonse, since they've always been a relatively minor characters, but the others tend to range from small recurring cameos (Dibbler) to having huge important (Vetinari).

Vetinari, in fact, has always been a fascinating character to see played, because he's a ruthless dictator, but he's on the side of the good guys. I always thought Jeremy Brett would make a great Vetinari, but both Jeremy Irons and Charles Dance did good, even if they barely had cameos.

I haven't seen Anna Chancellor in anything yet, but I'll save any judgment until the show comes out.

Ingrid Oliver, on the other hand, was great as Osgood in Doctor Who, so I can't really imagine them as the stuffy head of the assassin's guild, but it is an interesting choice.

Edited by alliterator on Nov 19th 2019 at 9:10:09 AM

My concerns with any Discworld adaptation is that the actors always assume it's an out and out comedy, tongue in cheek thing, then tend to go for abject hamming it up. Half the humour comes from the sardonic delivery and absolute deadpan attitude of the characters, not the "nudge nudge wink wink" format of the medium.

I do hope they don't go "guest star on Doctor Who" levels of over acting (Think: Racnoss Queen).

I would love some straight adaptations as they're written like police procedural already. But if they can keep the spirit whilst modifying it, I'll say I'm tentatively interested.

The adaptation of Good Omens (another Pratchett work, albeit in partnership) did it right in that most of the cast played it completely straight even though the situations were absurd. David Tennant threatening house plants was taken completely seriously - yes it was hammy, but the character was a ham not the actor.

Yeah, Discworld's best quality is that it's batshit nuts in content but played completely seriously.

Seriously, Death does an experiment about something in the beginning of Thief of Time by just repeatedly seeing if buttered toast will land buttered side down, and it landing buttered side up is seen as bad.

Actual screenshots from the show!

Carrot is definitely perfect, Angua's shorter than I would like, and I still want to see what their new Vetinari looks like in action.

I've seen the recently released screenshots and summary of the series. Hoooooo boy. I'm gonna need awhile to summarize my thoughts without degenerating into angrish.

I'm... curious, and waiting cautiously to see how it turns out. While I might like a traditional take on Discworld, as long as it has the settings fantastic elements—trolls, werewolves, etc. in particular—I'm not against a more-modern setting. And the shots on that page look appropriately gritty and odd for a take on Ankh-Morpork, I feel.

My feelings are this:

The books are the books and the show is the show. If the show is good (well written, well acted), I'm going to like it, even if it moves away from the aesthetic we normally think of when we see Discworld and the City Watch.

Now, onto the specific images: I think they are going for more of a parody of Law & Order or Chicago PD, while the books started out parodying the standard "city guard" trope and then moved on to parodying cop dramas (among other things). But I'm okay with that. Carrot looks like Carrot, Angua looks good, and while Vimes looks a bit too muscular, I'm not going to judge until I actually see him acting. (Pete Postlethwaite is dead, so there's never going to be a perfect Vimes anyway.)

I am kinda concerned, especially after I learned that Rhianna Pratchett is not involved in the show (source). I just hope this does not end up being an In Name Only Steampunk police procedural. I mean, I am OK with any change they want as long as they keep the spirit of the books and characters, but given how far from the source material they seem to be, any further difference may take it beyond the tipping point.

At least Vimes has exactly the expression I associate with the character and Carrot looks as if he had walked straight out of the book. The other characters... not so much.

The writers really had a conundrum to solve with this one. The early Watch books are so different from the later ones that finding a happy medium is difficult, and the setting has gone from medieval at the beginning to steampunk near the end. It looks to me that they're trying to bolt early stage Watch with late stage Discworld, which seems like a good compromise to me; having trains and a functioning bureaucracy will give them more toys to play with, and personally I'd like characters like William de Worde and Moist Von Lipwig to be able to show up earlier rather than later, if they're going to be around.

Oh so Rhianna Pratchett isn't involved, okay that clears up a lot of thoughts I had but also I didn't realize that the original intention was thrown disarray when Terry passed away and this is just trying to make the best of it.

But my ideal modernized AU version of Discworld would be the Witches and Tiffany.

Edited by Nouct on Jan 21st 2020 at 6:26:03 AM

This news is about ten days old, but the BBC has revealed the cast photo for The Watch. It features Lady Ramkin, Captain Vimes, Cheery, Angua, Detritus, and Carrot.

I see the trend of edgy adaptation is still going strong.