The Watch - A bit of Pratchett, but which bit?

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I have posted before about how some of our family are big fans of the works of Terry Pratchett. We have most of his books. My other half has read many of them several times, but I have not read them recently. We were intrigued that a TV show was to be made based on the Ankh-Morpork City Watch by BBC America. Less promising were comments by Pratchett's daughter and Neil Gaiman saying it did not have too much to do with the original books.

My other half particularly likes The Watch books featuring Captain Sam Vimes and as we watched the first couple of episodes she got increasingly angry with how much the production diverged from the books. I had forgotten many details and am not so particular, so I persisted after she gave up.

The series includes lots of characters from the books, but some have changed race and/or gender. That does not bother me too much. It is a shame they omitted some of the Watch such as Corporal 'Nobby' Nobbs. Vimes is not quite as I imagine him, but Richard Donner did create an interesting character. Corporal Cherry in the books is a female dwarf who can express her femininity in the city (as I read it), but here Cheery is a trans person (played by Jo Eaton Kent) and it seems not all dwarfs are small. It is a good portrayal of a trans person who can be themselves, but just not what I expected.

The story is a mish-mash of several books, but it does hang together reasonably well. I quite liked the scenes with the assassins. There are some nice performances by the cast.

It was largely filmed in South Africa with a sort of steampunk vibe. There are various elements of our world such as electricity, which it is suggested were conjured by the wizards who have been observing 'Round World'. I think it is mentioned that Ankh-Morpork is on the Discworld, so flat-earthers may like it for that. Not sure if ours is supposed to be resting on elephants and a turtle though.

This show may struggle as Pratchett fans will not like all the changes and anyone unfamiliar with the books may wonder what is going on as they will not know the characters. You have to wonder why someone would get the rights to a much loved set of books and then change so much. I know this also happened with Peter Jackson's Tolkein movies, but those at least followed the basic stories from the books.

The Pratchett books have been filmed before. There are a few animated and some live action productions that are much more true to the books. I think I need to watch those again.

Has anyone else seen this? What did you think?

tv fantasy pratchett proofofbrain cinetv palnet
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(Edited)

See this is why TV scares me! You now hive a mad wife that is hopefully not more mad because you kept watching😄
You know in the independence day movie with will smith? Well remember the old crazy man who flew the plane into the ufo?

In the book he was tortured by the aliens and was all ptsd out from it. The book gets all detailed about it in a wild way.

I felt like Hollywood lied to me as a 10 or 15 year old who read the book after already seeing the movie😄

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I treat books and movies as different things. They rarely totally line up. The pictures are better in my head. I can generally watch stuff without criticising it too much unless it's really bad.

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Me and my hubby @paolobeneforti have to see it! We read about it months ago. I know there's no an italian version, but I hope my hubby will find it with subtitles (I have some problems to see the entire series in english :P ). I cross my finger ^_^

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Well you have been warned what to expect. You just have to take these things as they are as it's rare that they match how you imagine the books.

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Another fan of Pratchett here 😄, I usually read those books of the watch but my favourite character of the Discworld is possibly Rincewind. These books are for fun but Terry usually introduces many philosophy in them and some political thoughts about the governments and the society that are real gems.

The comedy has been always an undervalued genre but in the case of Pratchett takes another dimension imo.

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I like Rincewind too. Pterry started by satirising fantasy, but went more to mirroring our world as he went on. There's a lot of humour in his descriptions that will not come across on TV. I met him once at an early fan convention.

!BEER

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I met him once at an early fan convention.

Wow that was worthy to be mentioned in the post.

Terry started by satirising fantasy, but went more to mirroring our world as he went on. There's a lot of humour in his descriptions that will not come across on TV.

Yeah agree fully with this, it's difficult to translate to a movie or a tv serie his humour, sometimes because he uses a lot of double meaning puns and sometimes because it's just absurd humour.

I may take a look to the tv show. Good Omens was quite decent in some of their chapters.

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I've written about the convention ages ago.

Good Omens was not bad, but I do feel Gaiman can get a bit too clever at times. He's said he is working on another series based on ideas he and PTerry talked about.

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You have to wonder why someone would get the rights to a much loved set of books and then change so much.

Really?

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well bil.prag is a Terry Pratchett character NAME translated to Serbian :)

I was happy with Good Omens. It managed to keep decent amount of the weird humor and was overall fine.

Not sure should i give this one a go. It could happen that i will end up pissed off the same as your wife :)

I just remembered the "AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER." tweet and got goosebumps again.

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I don't think it's a bad production, but it is just not what a Pratchett fan might hope for. I tried to set up expectations to avoid disappointment. Death does feature in it.

I'm wondering which character your name came from.

!BEER

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the name came when i was trying to make an instagram account and i did not want to connect it with facebook at the time. And everything i tried was taken and it suggested some numbers to it. that reminded me of Reaper Man when death quit its job and started working for that old lady and she asked for his name. And he was just randomly looking around and naming what he saw. I think the original is Bill Door but translated to serbian Prag means doorstep :)

and it is weird enough that no one uses it so it was free on most platforms i register, so i kept it :D

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That's cool. I need to re-read all the books some time as I've forgotten a lot. A good online name is nice to have. Mine came from someone mis-typing my name when we went bowling. I've used it in lots of places.

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I think I've read them all, and the Bromeliad stuff. I doubt I'll be interested in something loosely based on the world TP imagined. I was critical of the TV version of Good Omens (I did enjoy it).

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