Goku Black
That's the beauty of death. He is a seven foot tall scary Skeleton but he's also a genuinely nice person. It's the idea that you shouldn't judge someone on their appearance.
"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."
This is a title.
My favorite live action Death will always be the one from the Hogfather adaptation, but based on that short preview, this rendition is acceptably creepy while keeping some light-hearted humor.
Edited by Eagal on Oct 11th 2020 at 7:17:25 AM
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!
Too old for this
I'm less and less enthusiastic about this take on Vimes. I can give it a pass for now because it seems to be the Guards, Guards!Vimes (with everyone else save Carrot being closer to their Men at arms version), but I'm really not optimistic.
I will still try to watch this, though, but more as a steampunk story referencing Pratchett's work.
Edited by C105 on Oct 11th 2020 at 10:32:17 AM
Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
First episode came out on AMC+ today and BBC is airing it on Monday.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Too old for this
Okay... it's not entirely the wreckage I feared it would be, but I really don't understand why they decided to change so much about the setting and the characters. At least there are a few very brief glimpses here and there of Pratchett's ideas so maybe it could be not completely bad.
Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.
That's an interesting report. I am intrigued now to try out the series myself, should it turn up over here.
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Jan 2nd 2021 at 9:13:19 PM
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Too old for this
Don't get your hopes too high though. It is still very far from the books, but there are still enough bits left of Pratchett floating in the sludge for me to want to know what they'll do with them. And it is somewhat funny at least.
Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.
Oh, I'm not expecting it to much resemble the books outside of names—the trailers and promotional images made that pretty clear! Still, I do appreciate the warning.
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NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Vimes is pretty accurate to my headcanon. I've joked that he's slightly more put-together than I expected him to be, but it is pretty close. Lady Ramkin is quite a bit more active in the plot, but it isn't bad. The episode gave some text to the book's subtext of why Vimes finds her impressive instead of seeing her as just another noble. Carrot gained himself a bit of internal struggle/darkness by reading that letter. Not sure that The King Incognito needs such, but it did provide a way for the other characters to bond with him. I really like the voice for Detritus.
Past that, there must've been another glass clock and the Sweeper was too slow again. Just a few shards out of place and history ends up slightly off-kilter in a dozen different ways. I don't like how they're using the name Carcer Dun (I'd prefer another name from the same book, a more obscure character), but otherwise it's... dramatically different social context, with relatively the same cast.
Biggest disappointment to me is the lack of my favourite duo. I guess the creators didn't want the comedy those two carry with them, but I'm still sad that they aren't in the Watch.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Too old for this
Vimes carries too much of a Jack Sparrow vibe for me accept him as book Vimes, which does not mean I don't like his character though. Vetinari disappointed me a little, and Throat is really too far from Dibbler to my tastes. I did not expect the appearance of the CCTV imps and the bit about the goblins is interesting. I also wonder if Angua will end up controlling her transformation or if they thought it would be too much of a Story-Breaker Power.
I keep wondering if the reason they changed the setting was to cut the costs in the scenery - the Mad Max-esque setting we get is probably less costly to represent than a medieval fantasy one.
Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.
I didn't think it was that bad at all. I never actually made it that far in the novel series, but I believe that the setting does eventually avert Medieval Stasis and rise to the Urban Fantasy Schizo Tech seen in this series.
What I didn't get was why they made Vetinari a FTM trans man (or maybe a Cis man character that's just being played by a cis woman actress? That seems like something Pratchett would come up with), or why there would even be trans folks in a world where you have folks like wizards, who should be able to change a woman into a man on every level.
...then again, knowing Pratchett he'd probably write that the spell inverts everything, including brain wiring, so that they just go from feeling like a woman trapped in a man's body to a man trapped in a woman's body.
Edited by Napoleon_Blownapart on Jan 4th 2021 at 6:28:03 AM
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
. This isn't as bad as the fact that in the Guards, Guards book that this is taken from, Vetinari is an overweight slob who has all the power but none of the intelligence. A mistake that the author regrets and why he's usually portrayed as the whip-thin assassin-graduate since then.
I thought it was that at first too, but then Vimes outright refers to Vetinari as a he at one point.
Too old for this
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
This is why I wanted to watch the next episodes, in order to see how Sparrow-Vimes (and the other characters) evolves. So far the Carrot-Vimes dynamic is not that far from that of the book, so maybe there is some hope there.
By the way, I think the decadent Patrician was in The Colour of Magic (as Pratchett said, it was Vetinari, written by a very incompetent writer). Vetinari in Guards, Guards already has cunning to spare.
I'm a bit miffed they killed Detritus in the second episode, especially in such a ridiculous way. Guess it is another case of Pragmatic Adaptation to get rid of the most expensive character.
Wonse is another In Name Only character apparently. I wonder if they will have Carcer be in cahoots with the Auditors. It could be interesting if done well.
These guys definitely seem to know their Pratchett (the Roundworld reference in the second episode was nice), but I'm not quite sure yet of what they will be doing with it.
Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
To be fair to the show, Mr. Pratchett had a one-of-a-kind mind, and as such the only way this adaptation would be able to meet our expectations would be if he himself was involved, and it's a little hard to do that when the person in question is dead.
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
That argument might hold up better if they hadn’t alienated his daughter and her partner with Narrativia so much that they’re making a point of doing accurate adaptations themselves.
The way Rhianna Pratchett and Rob Wilkins have talked about the Watch series makes it super obvious something nasty went down behind the scenes.
That's kind of the big problem for me. A pragmatic adaptation is one thing. This really isn't one. Too much of it diverges too far, and it feels like there was some sort of huge break behind the scenes between Narrativia and the people behind the show. I would be a lot happier with it if it was like, clearly inspired by Discworld but was also its own original IP.
I mean, https://twitter.com/rhipratchett/status/1314630960860803074?s=20 you don't post stuff like that if you have a good working relationship with the people involved. You post that sort of thing if you want to be polite but also want to make clear you have absolutely nothing to do with the production, which in this case is important because she was actively involved in the earlier stages of the production and abruptly split off when the current iteration went into production.
Edited by Zendervai on Jan 12th 2021 at 7:00:11 AM
Not Three Laws compliant.
Doctor of Doctorates
And as noted in the twitter thread, she is herself a writer and knows how the adaptation process works, that certain compromises will be made... But THIS is not that.
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
It probably doesn't help that the original plan was based on a pitch by Terry Pratchett himself (it was started in 2012), then production stalled, and when BBC America got their hands on the project, the new showrunners just dumped absolutely everything and started over.
Like...this is the first major Discworld project released after Terry Pratchett's death, and it looks like the production switch happened in about 2016 a year after he died. Completely tossing everything Terry Pratchett had contributed and doing it their way, shortly after his death is, uh...really gross. And the overall reaction to it indicates that it was a bad decision on the showrunners part, combined with the low ratings (BBC America doesn't exactly get high ratings to begin with, but when it starts with ratings on par with the Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency season that got the show cancelled, that doesn't bode well) and signs point to people not really knowing what they were doing or aiming for and floundering way out of their depth.
Edited by Zendervai on Jan 13th 2021 at 2:01:02 PM
Not Three Laws compliant.
I have an odd perspective here because I've barely read any Discworld, but would very much like to, whenever I get around to it someday. Most of what I know about it comes from here at TV Tropes. So I went into the series fairly ready to take it as it is, appreciating the bits of Pratchett I recognize when I see them, and otherwise enjoying it on its own merits. Enough that I'd like to keep watching, but Youtube TV is about to cut me off from my parents' account for not being in the same city. Don't think I care enough to go try and hunt down another way to watch. Ah well.
Too old for this
I actually would be very interested in knowing the opinion of someone who got to the Watch adaptation with little knowledge of Pratchett. This goes by the way for most of the Pratchett adaptations so far (including Good Omens), because I always wonder how interesting/understandable/enjoyable the film was for someone who did not know the book by heart beforehand.
Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
I’ve gotten people to read the books by showing them the Hogfather and Going Postal miniseries.
Not Three Laws compliant.
My Discworld experience: A Blink of the Screen (Pratchett's short fiction) and the audiobook of The Shepherd's Crown (I know, starting at the end, with major tone shifts, etc.), both because I happened to find them at the library several years ago. I bought a copy of Equal Rites used but haven't read it yet.
My thoughts so far: I like the humor and the presentation (the Smash Cuts, the Freeze Frame Bonuses, the on-screen captionsnote ). Vimes was a surprise, but only because I know how he's supposed to be after all his Character Development, since that's the perspective trope examples are written from. The exposition in the first episode was rushed and awkward, but at least Death hung a lampshade on it afterward. The story so far is a bit of a thin frame to hang all the jokes on, though. I was also surprised they killed Detritus, and I expected a being made of stone, having taken a dozen crossbow bolts and fallen over, to simply stand up again.
Odd decisions all round, interesting direction to go, but no grand vision.
Vines is weird, I keep thinking it's like they smoothed a bit of Nobby Nobbs and Colon, mostly because they're notably absent. Vetinary is good because you can see she's doing what's best for her city but she's not unsympathetic (a difficult balance to get right with that character, glad they didn't double down on the ruthless parts of the character).
I thought a key character dying was odd too. Like another budget driven decision? Same as never seeing Angua transform or Cheery being basically a human. And Angua is again baffling because they cut out a lot of tension between her and Carrot to not even show her transform. Wouldn't it have made more sense to hold off the reveal a little? Would have plot-justified the lack of explicit werewolf scenes.
My biggest gripe is with Death. He doesn't quite have the ironic levity. He seems angry to be anywhere doing his job, so it raises the question why is he there? Like in the novels if he was somewhere he didn't need to be he'd have a twinkle in his eye and give a friendly hello. Here he both doesn't want to be there and has no reason to :/
Hmm... Much of that is unenthusing, I'll admit.
It's really a show that I would have to watch as its own thing, as something entirely divorced from the Discworld that I'm familiar with. As its own thing, it might work for me. As a Discworld adaptation, it likely won't.
Funnily enough, I dislike this take on Death for quite the opposite reason: the Death of the Discworld generally didn't come off as frightening, despite being a seven-foot-tall skeleton. Rather, he tended to be a rather sympathetic character. As I remember him, at least!
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