What I’m Watching: His Dark Materials

His Dark Materials: Season 1, Episode 5 “The Lost Boy” (B-)

I feel like I’m losing interest in what’s going on here, and that probably stems from the fact that the story isn’t proceeding along at an exciting pace and I remember most of the developments that we are seeing featured. It’s good to finally meet Will, who I remember as the protagonist from the second book in the series, and who isn’t yet familiar with a world where everyone has daemons and there are magical devices rather than cell phones. I immediately recognized his mother but couldn’t figure out from where, and I then discovered it’s because actress Nina Sosanya was in “Love Actually” a while ago and on “Killing Eve” more recently. The fact that everyone, including her son, thinks she’s crazy won’t help Will’s inevitable discovery of another world, but I hope it will at least be presented in an astounding and fantastic way. The secret about what the Gobblers were up to has been officially confirmed with the location of a boy with his daemon removed, a rather unsettling sight and concept. Lyra didn’t seem quite as bothered by it as I might have expected, but that may be because she’s so set on reading her alethiometer and compelling her new allies, like Iorek and Lee, to trust in its message so that they can manage to find her father, stop her mother, and save all of the abducted Gyptian children. I’m hoping that the remaining three episodes of this first season will compel me to want to watch the second.