Waffle Squadron Omega

There was a two part miniseries on the UK’s SkyOne channel this week called “Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic“. It’s an adaptation of his first two Discworld books and it’s far and away the best Terry Pratchett adaptation I’ve ever seen. Jenn and I watched the first part and a little of the second part last night and we were really impressed. Sean Astin plays the cheerful but clueless Twoflower, the Disc’s first tourist. Tim Curry plays a conniving wizard named Trymon, who is constantly looking to move up in the ranks at Unseen University. Jeremy Irons plays The Patrician, the incredibly intimidating ruler of the sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork. Christopher Lee is the voice of Death. The miniseries is also filled with a million other UK actors you may have seen somewhere, maybe flipping past WHYY or BBC America or something. The guy who plays Mr. Filch (the grumpy old caretaker of Hogwarts) in the Harry Potter movies is in the second part. He plays Cohen the Barbarian, an adventuring hero who so good at what he does that he’s able to survive into his 90’s. But the celebrity actors are only half of what makes this miniseries great. The overall presentation, the look and feel of it, brings a good measure of class to an otherwise ridiculous comedy.

It’s all done in a way that seems accessible to people who’ve never read any of the books, as far as I can tell. It’s genuinely funny and it doesn’t have that extra helping of cheese that most Sci-Fi Channel miniseries tend to have. If you’ve never read any Discworld books, the basic idea is that Pratchett uses the fantasy setting to write satire about modern-day events or trends. Things and ideas from our world kinda seep into the Discworld and tend to cause havoc. I remember reading one of the books where someone discovers how to make motion pictures. Suddenly a movie industry pops up overnight as various guilds decide there’s more gold to be made in filming stupid stories and selling people big bags of tasteless, yet addicting, “banged grains” rather than actually putting forth effort in regular old thievery or alchemy. Eventually, movie magic almost brings about the unleashing of hidden, dark, Lovecraftian elder gods from the “Dungeon Dimension” or whatever. Somehow. You get the idea. Though at first glance it may seem like Pratchett just slaps a coat of fantasy paint on contemporary satire, the more of his books you read, the more you realize how detailed his Discworld really is. Even though most of them fare well as standalone stories, continuity is pretty strictly maintained throughout the books. If one event changes Discworld society, that change stays in place through further tales, even if those other tales are about completely different characters…which they often are.

Anyway, the two books contained in this miniseries (”The Colour of Magic” & “The Light Fantastic”, respectively) are more focused on poking fun at fantasy conventions in general than any specific societal trend, and it’s a good introduction to the Discworld universe. Rincewind is a student at the Unseen University…and has been for about 40 years. He’s a bumbling, cowardly mess who seems completely incapable of anything magical, despite the word WIZZARD being badly sewn into his pointy hat. In his decades as a student, he hasn’t even managed to reach Wizarding Level 1, so the faculty decides his freeloading is at an end and that it’s time to give him the boot. Meanwhile, Twoflower arrives at the seedy Ankh-Morpork harbor, excited to see the sights and followed by a large walking steamer trunk filled to the brim with gold (a common metal in Twoflower’s homeland, the Counterweight Continent). The Morporkians are confused by the idea of someone VOLUNTARILY coming to see their awful cesspit of a city, but the sight of all that gold is whipping everyone into a frenzy…a fact to which Twoflower is completely (and suicidally) oblivious. Against his will, Rincewind gets roped into becoming Twoflower’s tour guide/bodyguard and hilarious adventures ensue.

The writing is great, the acting is…well, it’s not the best acting I’ve seen out of some of these fellas, but it’s definitely well above par for something made-for-TV. It also manages to be extremely faithful to the original material without getting bogged down in details. Everything looks exactly as I imagined as I was reading the books. Terry Pratchett himself seems to have been involved, as his name shows up in a “Mucked About By” credit in the opening of both segments. He even plays a bit part in the very beginning as a shifty-eyed Astrozoologist. All-in-all, I highly recommend it. The torrents for it are easily found on EZTV. I wouldn’t be surprised if it shows up on some domestic channel at some point, or DVD or whatever. Given the right amount of extras, I could definitely see myself buying this on DVD. However, if you want to see it sooner than later, your good friend The Internet just so happened to Tivo it off of SkyOne for himself and he says he’ll to lend it to you.

Tags: comedy, fantasy, Reviews, Reviews, TV, TV

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 10:46 pm and is filed under Reviews, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.