Air Date Announced for ‘His Dark Materials’ TV Adaptation

Fans of Philip Pullman’s fantasy series His Dark Materials will no doubt be aware that the BBC and HBO have been working on a TV adaptation of the first book in the series, Northern Lights. The series has been hotly anticipated for some time and the excitement only increased when the first trailer was recently revealed. If you just can’t wait to check out the show, then you’ll be pleased to learn that it’s set to air later this year on November 3.

As Deadline reports, the show will air first in the UK on Sunday, November 3 via the BBC and HBO will air it the following day on Monday. The first season follows our heroine Lyra as she discovers an evil plot involving kidnapped children and discovers a strange phenomenon called Dust. The show stars Dafne Keen as Lyra, James McAvoy as Lord Asriel, Helen McCrory as the voice of Stelmaria, and Ruth Wilson as Marisa Coulter.

One of the show’s executive producers, Jack Thorne, admitted the books had been difficult to adapt. “We wrote papers to ourselves about all the different ideas in the show,” he explained. “We wanted to do a Ph.D. in Phillip Pullman and we tried to do a Ph.D. in His Dark Materials. I wrote 46 drafts of episode one in order to find a way to tell this story as elegantly as possible. [Pullman’s] denseness is a blessing and a curse; it’s so exciting. Sometimes when you’re doing an adaptation of something there’s a moment when you know everything there is to know. With Phillip you never can. It’s a very challenging show to write but also glorious to write.”

So far, two seasons have been given the go ahead with each season consisting of eight episodes. We can’t wait to watch the show for ourselves and we hope it lives up to the quality of the books.