George R.R. Martin Had Nothing But Love For This Finished HBO Fantasy Series

HBO's "His Dark Materials" series has never really gotten its flowers. When the small screen take on Philip Pullman's book trilogy of the same name premiered in Fall 2019, the masses were still reeling from the contentious ending of the HBO juggernaut "Game of Thrones" the previous May. So, the timing wasn't what you would call ideal for another gritty, fantasy literature adaptation where poor, unsuspecting kiddos are often sacrificed as pawns to the machinations of the scheming, morally ambiguous adults around them.

It probably doesn't help that Pullman's novels haven't ever achieved true mainstream success stateside. New Line Cinema learned this the hard way when its costly 2007 movie rendition of the first book in Pullman's trilogy, "The Golden Compass," left just about everyone grumbling, flopped hard at the domestic box office, and only barely avoided becoming a total catastrophe thanks to a strong international turnout. Under the guidance of head writer Jack Thorne (perhaps best known these days for co-creating "Adolescence"), HBO's "His Dark Materials" retains even more of its source material's dense ideas involving religion and the very design of the universe, which only makes it that much less accessible to casual viewers.

Needless to say, however, that's not an obstacle for George R.R. Martin. The storyteller who gave us the literature that inspired "Game of Thrones" was quite taken with HBO's "His Dark Materials" when he caught up on Season 1 in 2020. Writing on his personal blog, Not A Blog, Martin praised the show's "gorgeous" production design, calling it "SO much better" than the "Golden Compass" movie. He even suggested that those unfamiliar with Pullman's novels give it a look anyway, as "it may make you a Pullman fan," and not just because James McAvoy goes full zaddy in the series.

If an HBO TV show based on a fantasy novel series about a courageous orphan who comes of age while battling malevolent, power-hungry forces and learning they're destined to bring about great change sounds intriguing, then you're in luck! "His Dark Materials" is all done, with each of its three seasons adapting roughly one of Philip Pullman's original books and rightly earning better reviews than the seasons before it.

The series stars Dafne Keen as Lyra, a young girl who, in many ways, is just as much a spitfire as Keen's renowned take on Laura/X-23 in the "X-Men" film "Logan." That being the case, it's of little surprise when Lyra finds herself tangled in a twisted web involving her dubious new mentor, Marisa Coulter (Ruth Wilson), her uncle Lord Asriel (James McAvoy), and the Magisterium, the insidious, religious organization that rules her world and has deemed Asriel's studies of parallel universes and a mysterious substance known as Dust to be heretical.

As you've likely cottoned onto by now, "His Dark Materials" takes place in a reality quite unlike our own. Here, people's souls appear as their (typically verbal) animal companions, known as daemons, while humans co-exist with witches, angels, and talking polar bears. Make that armored talking polar bears. "Can't go wrong with armored bears. The world needs more armored bears," as George R.R. Martin astutely noted on his blog.

The whole thing is brought to life in a lushly dark and gravelly visual fashion as well, which is appropriate in this case, given that the show (like Pullman's novels) isn't firmly geared towards younger folks. Be that as it may, this might have only compounded the problems that "His Dark Materials" had to deal with during its run.

To their credit, the producers behind "His Dark Materials" spared no expense in making the show; it never looks cheap, and it attains that sense of scale befitting a sweeping fantasy epic of this ilk. The show's cast is full of heavy-hitters, too, with Ruth Wilson doing particularly exquisite work infusing the cunning Mrs. Coulter with depth and nuance. Even "Hamilton" maestro Lin-Manuel Miranda gets some meaty material to sink his teeth into as Lee Scorseby, the heroic maverick aeronaut whom George R.R. Martin "loved" in the show.

All the same, the subject matter of "His Dark Materials" can be upsetting (problematic parents and child abuse are recurring themes), so that didn't make the series any easier of a sell upon its debut. It was also directly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a Season 2 episode that would've focused on Lord Asriel being scrapped (though that did benefit another character in the third season). More so, this resulted in a prolonged break between seasons, with Season 3 being essentially dumped over the span of a single month in the U.S. in December 2022.

By that point, it was painfully obvious that HBO owner Warner Bros. Discovery (or, perhaps more accurately, its then-new CEO David Zaslav) didn't feel the show had much value, given its not-so-hot viewership in the States. That's a real shame; as Martin would tell you, it's certainly worth your time, even before Season 3 culminates with a literal war on Heaven. And though I've tried to dance around it, I'll finally say it: There's all the less reason to watch HBO's controversial "Harry Potter" series when "His Dark Materials" will do a better job scratching the same fantasy itch.