The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - Bonus: The Watch feat. Marc Burrows (Machina Ex Deus)

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, usually read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, special guest Marc Burrows joins us to react to BBC America’s The Watch!Stories! More Stories! Too Much Story?Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi. Find Marc Burrows here: @20thCenturyMarc Things we blathered on about:The Watch - iPlayerTHE MAGIC OF TERRY PRATCHETT: A BiographyCalling time on The Watch? What went wrong (and right) with the latest Terry Pratchett adaptation - Marc Burrows’ review for Hey U GuysLocus Awards Ceremony 2021 - YouTube (timestamp link – goes to Marc’s bit!)Terry Pratchett’s The Watch (2011 footage of Pratchett) - YouTubeFridging - TV TropesMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

This is a bonus edition of The Truth Shall Make You Fret, in which we discuss in a very casual, unstructured, chaotic manner, our first reactions to the watch BBC America adaptation. Joining us was special guest Mark Burrows, who you may remember as a previous guest on The Truth Shall Make You Fret, and probably more importantly,

the author of The Magic of Terry Pratchett, which is the first full biography of Sir Terry Pratchett. We hope you enjoy the show. What's your take on Good Omen series two? I'm excited about it. There's a lot of people who aren't happy about that, and I think that's understandable, I guess,

but I feel like Neil gets to do what Neil wants to do. It's like, he has every right. But the thing I'm most excited about, apart from the fact that the first series is really good, so that we know that cast works, we know that that team works, we know that the writing is good. So the framework is already there for it to be really good. But I'm mostly looking forward to seeing a version

of Good Omen, seeing a story with those characters where I don't know what happens. That's mind-blowingly exciting, because I first read that book in 1995. I know that book backwards, and the two adaptations that have happened, the radio one and the TV one, I always, nothing in them, they're both fairly faithful.

Nothing in them was particularly exciting. There was nothing to surprise me, really. And that was nice, it was nice to see it done, it was nice to see it brought to life. But the idea of something that has the stamp of authority on it, that doesn't do what the watch does and kind of create its own world is within the game and pratch it, Good Omen's canon world,

where I don't know what's gonna happen. I think that's really exciting. It is, yeah. The amount of kind of vitriol almost level that Neil Gaiman has been a bit odd to me, because he is the co-author, that is his as well. It's not like random came up and decided to write a sequel. And the original concept of Good Omen

was Neil Gaiman's idea. He came up with the original idea. He wrote the short story that was like the 5,000 word short story that was the basis of it was entirely him. So if anything has slightly more right to do what he wants with it. And I mean, it's a good story to say, to say, yeah, there was this night

where we brainstormed the sequel. And it's true, they did do it because they both talked about that before. I'm not sure how much of that conversation that night will remain in the show because who knows, because it's been, there's 30 years of distance between then and now and no recording of it. Although Pratchett worked on the original scripts

they wrote in the early 90s for the movie adaptation. And they pillaged a lot of the ideas for the sequel for the movie, which then got rejected and then got rewritten by Neil Gaiman and then rejected again. So there is like, there's even like script stuff written by Terry Pratchett. That's good.

I didn't know that. There is like further good aims. You did, because it's in my book, you just forgot. Oh, so sorry, yeah. I knew it briefly. I have read that information before. There's a lot of facts in your book, Mark. There are a lot of facts in my book.

This is why you're the podcast oracle. I didn't get that. Did you know that again? All right, Siri. It was really annoying is that that was a clue in the New York Times crossword today as well of what Siri says or something. Oh, sorry.

I didn't get that. This is really helpful. It's reminding me now. If you could have done this this morning, it would have been great. I've been getting all the way to Friday on the New York Times. Joanna does the New York Times crossword.

He did. She can do every day as well. I can do Monday and Tuesday. We've got the app. She's fratting, got me into it. You're both so bougie. Yeah, I know it's bad, isn't it? In my other, sorry.

I was gonna say, in my defense, I only drink really bougie coffee while doing the crossword because- That's been your defense. Look, because it's green. Oh, okay. Do you have the same relationship with the New York Times crossword compiler

that Lord Vettanari has with the Angkor Pork Times crossword compiler? No, I'm fully aware that the New York Times crossword compiler is a lot more intelligent than me. So I just finished watching the show today. Because, yeah, I'm surprised you did because you're somebody who would binge watch something

as soon as it was available, usually. I know, but I put it off so it'd be very fresh in my brain for this and was supposed to be organized enough to have finished it on Wednesday night and then forgot I had to go out for sushi on Wednesday night. So I kind of screwed up my whole schedule. I see what happened there, yeah.

I didn't forgot until I was meant to be at the restaurant and had to turn myself into a functioning human and get into a taxi within 10 minutes. It went really well. Good. Well, it's been a long time since I had sushi. First world problems. Yeah.

I didn't even know we had a sushi restaurant in this town. We do, but that's not where I was. I was at the wine bar that does the monthly sushi night. Oh, of course you were telling me. It's the bougiest thing I've done in months. You're in London, aren't you, Mark? I am, yes. London, London.

So you've been going back to restaurants, yeah. Yeah, basically, yes. I was in one yesterday. Yeah, I went to a Greek restaurant yesterday. I went to a vegan restaurant last week. Yeah, last night I was in a pub eating burgers. It's almost like there's not been a horrible plague. That's nice.

Yeah. When did you... Sorry, I've gone so far off topic. When did you last watch the watch, Mark? I watched it when he first came out. So in the U.S., I found nefarious means to watch it. I tried to get the production of BBC America to send me screeners

because I was writing an article on it, but they wouldn't. They point blank refused to send it to a British journalist because they hadn't worked out the British rights yet. So I was like, well, I will have to find other ways of watching this TV show. Yeah, I did read the review at the time and again just now. Mine was a fairly generous,

but pretty accepted viewpoint, I'd imagine. Yeah, I think so. I think I was in the middle of the kind of good to bad scale reviews. But yeah, I last saw it around then. It's fresh in the mind. Shall we properly make a podcast? Yes, all right, Joanna, why don't you introduce us?

I can remember what the intro is now. Hello and welcome to the Two Shall Make He Fret, a podcast in which we are usually reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discard series, one as a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. Oh, and I'm Mark Burrows.

Hi, I'm Mark Burrows. We have a special bonus guest. Yeah, as hinted at, we managed to get somebody who knows what they're talking about on the podcast yet again, yet again for the second time. And today we're going to talk about the watch as promised. Initial reaction, not our big in-depth episode by episode. Correct, because I was not taking notes.

Note on spoilers before we crack on. We are usually a spoiler light podcast. Obviously very heavy spoilers for the TV series, The Watch. We'll be talking about it from beginning to end and possibly minor spoilers for future events in the Discworld novels. So if you really don't want to know anything. I'm going to say there's probably going to be spoilers

for a lot of the Watch novels. Particularly Guards, Guards and Night Watch. Yes, agreed, yeah. Guards, Guards, we're allowed to spoil. We've talked about that one already. Yeah. I'll find a way to spoil the rest. It was once.

It was Lupine once. God damn it. Guards, we have Mark here. Hello, Mark, congratulations, Mark. Yes, congratulations, Mark. Thank you very much. Yes, yeah, I won an award. Yeah, people liked my book and I won an award.

Which is really, really hard for somebody with my level of imposter syndrome to process. Because my brain keeps worrying to try and find a way to disavow it somehow or tell me that I've fluked it or it was a mistake or it was luck or it was somebody else's hard work that I'm claiming credit for. And it's really difficult because it's pretty clear.

The Locust Awards, yes. For the best non-fiction, I will link to the award ceremony and the show notes. Yeah, it was really, I kind of had a feeling I'd won because they asked for, they emailed me to say, hi, you're in the top three. So what we want you to do is record a acceptance speech in case you win.

And I thought, seems a bit of a waste of time to do that for all three people. Like they're asking two out of the three people to waste their time completely. It almost seems a bit mean, wouldn't it? Yeah, so I thought, maybe I've actually won and they only send this to the winners, but I kind of didn't dare let myself have that thought.

But I actually, in retrospect, I kind of want to email everyone else on the shortlist and go, did they ask you to do a video? I promise I'm not gloating, but... Yeah, it felt a little bit like I was rubbing their faces in it, but, and I wouldn't want to do that to Walter Cohen, like he's an old man. Oh, what was it?

Check off from Star Trek. It's check off from Star Trek. He was, it was his, an update of his autobiography. Ah, well, yeah. I didn't think I'd beat him, and I did. Hooray. Yes. Take your nuclear vessels, naff off.

Yeah, but that's the only kind of, my imposter syndrome has managed to come up with one thing. All it can do, all it's managed to come up with is, yeah, you won't do it again. Every other voice telling me that I didn't deserve that had to be silenced because there is no arguing with it. Well, we shall see. Are we allowed to say what the next book is going to be?

If we don't know, say yeah. Yeah, I've got, well, I've got two coming out, although neither of them are going to be eligible for a Locust Award, which is a science fiction and fantasy based awards in the US, because neither of them are, because they're both about music. I've got a book about the Manic Street Preachers

coming out in October, which I was supposed to be just editing and finding other writers for, but I ended up linking every single, I found 12 people to write essays about the band and I linked them together with like a sort of line by line, year by year timeline of what had happened to the band, just to put the essays into context.

What happened is as soon as I started doing that, I got massively, massively into it and eventually start, and I eventually basically wrote a detailed biography in bullet point form. Around the essays, nice. And the other one's David Bowie, is that it? David Bowie and Mark Bolen, yeah. That's my main sort of projects.

Yeah, that's my main sort of project, which I'm kind of, which is dominating my thinking all the time now. And if you look at my bookshelf, it's entirely books about Glamrock and David Bowie. But I'm, yeah, it's about the relationship between Bolen and Bowie, who were born the same year in London

and had these kind of parallel careers. And it's kind of what it tells you about Britain and post-war life and as you fade from the kind of black and white miserable post-war austerity into the kind of technicolor bisexual glam rock era. And the color gradually fades up and then everything goes wrong.

And then one of them's career goes like that and one of them's career goes like that. And it's kind of looking at music and sex and art and stardom and culture and what we can learn about it from those two. So yeah, that's taking a very deep end. Yeah.

See, I'd say if any music artist could possibly qualify as sci-fi, it would be David Bowie. Yeah, actually, that's true. And the thing is, it seems like a weird left turn from writing about Terry Pratchett, but actually they were born at the same time. Pratchett was born April.

Bowie was January 47. Marlboro was September 47. Pratchett was April 48. And so actually their lives kind of at the beginning of their lives do actually have a similar path. They were working class kids born at the same time in the shadow of the war in the London area.

And they were cleverer than the people around them and then what they did with it. And then they would go off in different directions but they all in their own way created fantasy worlds and sort of processed the world. And they're a product of the same generation. So I kind of do feel like there's a thematic link that I might be stretching slightly.

I like it. You can do it. I like it. That is a good segue, I'd say. Yes, I like it. Say today, though, today, we're talking about more Pratchett-y stuff because we don't know enough about music

to try and do a podcast about that. There is a link there though. There is a music element to the watch. Yeah, this was an interesting part of this show actually. I know it was part of the trailer but I'd kind of forgotten that. And so once I saw everybody up on stage in a kind of, not glam rock, but glam punk almost,

kind of fusion style, it was a slight shock in a good way. It's actually forming a band was, I think, one of the few Terry Pratchett ideas for the show that made it into the show. Yes, yeah, that was in the video you linked in your review, wasn't it? Yeah, there's this amazing video from about,

it must have been about 2012, I think, that was the SFX hosted and it's Pratchett and it's Pratchett and some of the producers, people who ended up not being involved in the show, discussing what was essentially, what they were essentially thinking of as CSI Angkmaupok and throwing ideas around. I love that video because Rob Wilkins is in it,

just eating a croissant in the corner of the screen, not realizing that he was on camera. It's a very ad hoc video, but it's just really nice. Definitely linked to that, but the CSI idea, I kind of almost like more, just the idea of this properly episodic, like a case per week show. What do I mean by that?

That was the original idea, because the original idea is it wasn't meant to be an adaption of any of the books, it was meant to be a continuation of the books. It was meant to be like new stories involving the world that Pratchett had set up, it was gonna follow on from snuff and then he would have to sign off

on anything that happened because any future books would be reflecting things that happened in the city. Oh, it would be canon, huh? Yeah, it was meant to be entirely canon with Pratchett as the sort of, the kind of overlord of it, making sure that everything kind of stayed in line with his vision, which is so far from what we got.

Yeah, the world that could have been. Yeah, which is neither here nor there. Which is not, to sound like Granny Weatherwax, it's neither one thing toward the other. Yeah. It's not quite a straight adaption and it's not quite new stories. It's somewhere kind of unsuccessfully

in the middle of those two things. I must say, one of the first notes I made was that in the title sequence, I think it says inspired by the character created by Terry Pratchett, which I thought was kind of the most hands-off way they possibly could have put it. Considering it wasn't just the characters, like it was also the world and quite a lot of the lines

and the stories. Yeah. Yeah, it's such a copper. I'm considering they kept using, in all the marketing, they kept using a distant and second hand set of dimensions, which is the opening line of the first Discworld book. Like they kept saying, don't call it an adaption.

Both sides of the argument, both the Pratchett estate and the program makers kept saying, it's not an adaptation, it's an interpretation, it's inspired by not adapted from. And you're like, it's not really though, is it? I mean, like that's Commander Vimes. Like that's basically, they didn't really mess with that character.

They didn't really, you know, that's Carrot. Like, you know, that's sort of, that's Angus slightly far off, but essentially they're the same characters. And some of the plots, the plot is essentially the same. And it's a city's called Angmore Park. And it's ruled over by Lord Veterinary. And they're the city watch.

And like, you know, it's, there's guilds. Like it's pretty close for something that's not supposed to be an adaption. I think that was a kind of pretty cheap get out of jail free card that I don't buy for a second. Yeah. I wonder if that was signed up on by the other party though, as the mutually agreed distancing way.

I think it probably was, yeah. I think that's when that's, I think it, they had to put some distance between the two, the two things because it was so far from an astray adaption now. Yeah. Yeah. I was, as I said, I reread your review earlier today

and the, I kind of forgotten the drama that came first. Or the, not even that, a very low key drama, wasn't it? It was all slight tweets from Rob and a comment here and there. And then everyone in the Terry Pratchett Facebook groups were going nuts over it, but. Yeah. It was some very subtle but quite effective shade flowing.

Yeah. Yeah. I thought, but what's really interesting is that there is a dividing line because the official Pratchett Twitter account that's ran by Rob was like, I'm assuming people know who Rob is. Rob Wilkins, who was Terry's assistant come business manager.

And basically Neil Gaiman refers to him as Terry Pratchett's representative on earth. He, like, he, until like six months before the show aired, Rob was tweeting behind the scenes videos. He was tweeting like links to, to kind of cool stuff. At one point, I remember he tweeted a video, a picture of the guy who plays Vimes, whose name Richard.

I've forgotten his name. Dorma, thank you. Yeah. Really a picture of Richard Dorma that he'd found on, that he'd seen in a tube station. And he was like, Oh, I feel weird cause I'm walking over Captain Vimes, hashtag Captain Sam Vimes, hashtag the watch. And it's like, so he was, you know,

he was doing the same thing for it as he was doing for Good Omens. And then suddenly it stopped. I wonder what the straw was. Yeah. What was the final straw? And they can't, I mean, it must, he must have seen the scripts at that point. So I don't know, it's a,

I don't know if it was, if there was a bit more personal drama than went on or something like that. But I wouldn't like to speculate. I would, I would like to stay on the right side of the Terry Pratchett estate. Thank you very much. Yes, that's very nice. As always, being on the side of the Pratchett estate

in any argument, heavily implied on this. Yes. Very much so. Along with the loincloths and eugenics being bad. Yes. Things often implied on the podcast. But I forgot that there was so much controversy around that. I mean, even we were quite bitchy about it when we saw the Comic-Con panel back in,

I want to say November. It was late last year anyway. Yeah. I stick by some of my bitchiness. Largely, I think I reacted to the trailer, portraying everything a lot worse than it actually was. My main gripe precinct, it was that they turned kind of soundbombs as alcoholism into a funny clown, ha ha drunk.

And actually, I think Richard Dorma managed to stay on the right side of, actually that's unfortunately pretty good portrayal of a functioning alcoholic. There it is, yeah. Obviously it's turned up a little bit for being on talent. I don't know if you have any structure for this, by the way, or whether I should just say anything

that comes into my head. No, go for it, please. Yeah, we've got some bullet points to go from if we start wandering off too far, but that's it. Because there are some people who gave Richard Dorma some stick for that portrayal, but I heard somebody talking about how, why did he choose to do that ridiculous accent?

That's Richard Dorma's accent. Yeah, that's his voice, isn't it? That's literally how he speaks. He's Northern Irish. Oh, that's so mean then, isn't it? Yeah, but I actually think, there are some kind of, the references to Popeye were not

a million miles from the mark, I think. But actually, I thought he was one of the best things in it. And like, particularly the vimes of early, the first half of Guards of Guards, pretty much, that's pretty much him. That's not a million miles away from the character we know from the books, really. And I think that, there are other characters in the show

that were either not, maps pretty loosely, or entirely different people who they haven't been in the same name. Yeah, but vimes wasn't one of them. I thought, I actually thought Dorma's vimes was basically felt like vimes. You could have a different vimes in mind, but also, Stryline again.

Yes. Which I always appreciate. I wasn't sure about the eyeliner until I saw it with all of everything else, and then it fit perfectly. I'm always there for Boys in a Liner. But yeah, I genuinely thought that the Dorma's portrayal and the writing of vimes, I think that version of vimes had the potential

to become the richer vimes of the later books. I think as the kind of more thinly sketched version of the character that were introduced at the beginning. And I think the alcoholism actually worked in terms of, it did its narrative job. And I don't think it was a million, yeah, as you said, it's not a million miles away from a portrayal of an alcoholic.

They could have done the social realism version of alcoholism, but that would have been a different show. And arguably would have been less, even less pre-achity than the portrayal we got. Yeah. There was quite a lot of tonal whiplash though, wasn't there through the episode? You'd go from quite jolly puns, slapstick,

whatever to flashback trauma. So much flashback trauma. Yeah, and that's just great failing, I think. That was the thing that worked least about the whole thing is that it never seemed to settle whether it was the Mighty Boosh or whether it was Doctor Who or whether it was Game of Thrones

or like it kind of veered wildly between all of those tones. And that I think is the thing that let it down the most. That's the thing that serves Pratchett least as well because the joy, because Terry Pratchett books never do that. You never get tonal whiplash from Pratchett books. I mean, you might do if you read Eric and then read Night Watch.

Yeah. But you don't do that as a rule. Yeah. But certainly you don't in the same book. You know, those gear shifts are handled really well. Everything is always, those plots work beautifully. They're really intricate and the mysteries work beautifully.

And you know, there's grim stuff in the Tiffany books, for example, but it doesn't come out of nowhere. It feels a bit like they were trying to do the thing that I love when Terry Pratchett does in the books of, you know, big, beautiful, poetic piece of prose that ends with a thud or with something very silly at the end. Especially with some of the speeches

and what happened instead was you'd have a huge, big emotional moment with a bad bit of comedy that undercuts it. Yeah. You had a robust bit. Yeah. And it just never, it just never quite worked. Like they did have the moment

where they sang All the Little Angels, which I think they got wrong as well because I don't think that song is meant to, although the tone of the writing in Night Watch when they sing All the Little Angels Rise Up is melancholy. I think it's meant to be a marching song. It is.

It's meant to be like a soldier's marching song. Yeah. And Corey Penney did a really lovely version of it on 25th of May this year, which is somewhere on the Twitter. Oh, cool. And it's a marching song. Yeah. I always thought it was like,

see how they rise up, rise up, rise up. I always think it thought it was like that, not this kind of soulful, mournful tone. Although people seem to really respond to that, but that was a beautiful moment. And then contrast that with Dr. Cruise's doing karaoke and things like it's all of the assassin's guilt stuff, ridiculous, all the veterinary stuff, completely ridiculous.

And then you've got this grim, the grim carcer story, which is the sort of thematic part of it. And it's actually, the carcer's story about outside of them and can take in control of your own destiny and all that kind of thing, which doesn't fit with the kind of slapstick, quite delightful assassin's guilt stuff, but it's, yeah, the tone is all over the place.

Yeah. And then you've got, as you say, all of the weird slapstick assassin's guilt stuff and the nicely bizarre bits, but then keeps reminding you that you've also seen the murder of Sybil's parents dreadfully. Yeah. Like onscreen. I'm like, oh, Inigo Skimmer, what a lad,

we literally did just see Strangle that woman. So. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't think Inigo Skimmer, obviously nothing like the book character, but the character they made for the show, that was really good writing and great casting.

Paul K was brilliant. Yeah. I think that's the skill of Paul K, partly, lifting that off the page. He's very good at slightly creepy characters like that. It was fun seeing him actually acts against Richard Dormer again as well, because obviously they had a- Of course, yes.

I hadn't even realized that. Game of Thrones, Richard Dormer played Beric Dundarian and K played Thoris of Mere. And Game of Thrones, obviously the final season was terrible and we don't discuss it, but especially in the first seasons when it was still running sort of parallel to the books, one of it was so good

because it wasn't a perfect, the accurate adaptation. It cut a lot of stuff that wasn't needed. Yeah. I'd say it was better than the books in places. Yeah. And you could do, not that I think the watch books are bad in any way or need lots of things cut, but you could do an adaptation that isn't 100% accurate to the books,

but that's still closer in the Game of Thrones' direction still has that care and attention on it. Which actually is one of the things I'm excited about for Good Omens season two, because the reason, because Good Omens is a very, apart from there's some extra stuff in there, but particularly for the first few episodes,

is by and large is the book coming to life on screen. Yeah. I mean, even to the point where they have a narrator doing the bits that they didn't want to leave out, that can really put into dialogue. Yeah, exactly. And Neil has said himself that if he was writing this from scratch, like if it wasn't for the fact that actually what he was doing was honoring his friend,

like a lot of it would have been thrown out. A lot of it would have been written, because it wasn't written for that story, it wasn't written for television. It was written to be a novel. Whereas this, whereas the next season has the opportunity to write a series of television. Like there's no roadmap to stick to.

They don't have to go, okay, how do we make that what, that bit of the book work on telly? They can actually write a telly. And that's really, and I guess that is an argument for the existence of the watch in the form it happens. But it's not very successful. Yeah. It's one of the big downfalls with TV adaptations,

is if you're writing for television, you're writing, let's say a six episode series, and they're hour long episodes. You were writing six hour long stories, and then you might have an overarching six hour kind of arc running through them. Good Omens kind of manages those emotional beats. It has beginning and middle and end to each episode,

but it's basically a six hour movie. It's an adaptation of one continuous story. It works because Neil Gaiman is a really talented screenwriter actually. Yeah. And you know, he's written for the screen, and he was, you know, it manages to walk that line. I think it probably could have been a stronger show

if it had had the kind of, not courage, but if it had the opportunity and another travels a leg of time to kind of be a little bit more fast and loose. I think he made the right call though, because now he's kind of got the trust of the fan base he needs kind of thing. I wonder what the ratio is of old to new fans of Good Omens. I did an appearance at a Good Omens convention, an online Good Omens convention.

And a lot, there are people that literally had never read the book, let alone like, you know, the TV version of Good Omens is the canon version of Good Omens as far as they're concerned. And it has, I think, cause I actually think it improves on the book a little bit. There are, no, the flashback stuff is really, really interesting.

Like in episode three, when it flashes back to, it's the traces them from the dawn of time to the present day. Yeah, soft open. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah, as a cold open, as cold opens go, it's great. But it's very televisual and it works really nicely. And I think those things really add to it.

And the last episode, which is almost entirely stuff that had been planned for the sequel, which is why one of the reasons I wonder how much of that original stock of ideas he's left over because they did pillage them a bit. But the watch could have done the same thing. It could have been really televisual and still true to certain elements

of the spirit of the books. Cause I actually think it does mirror the spirit of the books, just not the detailing places, but in other places it just fails miserably. And it kind of falls between those two stalls of it's not a great TV show because it kind of jumps for being a great TV show and misses. And it kind of grasps the cliff edge and then falls off.

Jettison's a lot of stuff that it could have needed in order to make that jump and fails in the jump. Yes. Yeah, I did, yeah. I laughed out a few times during, but not as much as I could tell they wanted me to. There was some really cringy dialogue moments as well, like huge points to Laura Rossi for playing Sibyl

and managing to make that character that badass while delivering some of the cringiest lines. Yeah. Yeah, that was that character should have been awful, but she's brilliant in it. She's so good, she makes it work, but the line about saddling up ponies because I ride hard, made me crawl inside of myself

and dice like they do. Oh, sorry, I'm just eating my own fist. Exactly. Oh, it's awful. Yeah, there's, and it's weird. Like the humor is an interesting aspect of it because you think they'd keep jokes, but there aren't that many jokes from the book.

The line that was in the trailer, and it's a really good showcase of Joey and Kent's timing as a comic actor where Cheery, it's echoing the scene in Men at Arms where they give vimes the coffee. Cheery says something along the lines of, have you seen the goblin yet? His name is Trevor and he cannot be reasoned with.

And it's a funny line and it's delivered very well, but it's not by any stretch a line from the book and it's a completely different type of humor. Like it's surrealist offbeat, it's not grounded in the story. It's- You mentioned my taboo show, yeah? Like you could imagine Noel Fielding delivering that line

instead of my taboo. Exactly, exactly, yeah. And there is actually, I think there are actually a lot of Vince Noir in the Cheery of the show. I think I probably enjoyed that character the most actually. Yeah, I did too. Yeah, it's just the pure novelty of it because they were so different from the Cheery in the books.

I wasn't making the same comparisons with Vimes and I could enjoy the character as a new one. That's absolutely true, yeah. Cause yeah, there is a, there's a through line there, obviously. Yeah. And I quite like it that visually, in terms of television work,

I don't think you'd have to explain the idea that dwarves don't have gender. They all present as male, some of them are women, but we don't know which ones. Yeah. Yeah, trying to get all of that across. There's a lot that they didn't do from the books because it just wouldn't have worked.

Yeah, it'd be very difficult. Whereas to say I'm non-binary and to be visibly, I guess a trans, I guess a femme presenting trans person. Yeah. At least for the first time. At the start of the series, yeah. At the start of the series, yeah.

It's a much easier shorthand of basically telling the same journey of somebody who's rebelling against the gender conformity of the restrictive society they grew up in. I was going to say, speaking of Terry's journey, you know what you were saying, Joanna, about interesting times kind of having, it seemed like several themes

that they tried to jam in at once, but it didn't quite work. Yeah, it starts all these threads of this is going to be the big theme at the end and then never fit close as any of them off. Yeah, I kind of found myself remembering you saying that while I was watching this show just because it seemed like they really liked this idea

and this idea and this idea from the books. It was my kitchen sink. And we don't really have time to put them all in, but we will. Yeah, because you do, you have Cherry's character journey, you have Vimes' character journey, you have Lady Sybil's character journey.

Carrot doesn't have a character journey. Carrot is quite a boring character. It is, isn't it? Anguished does, but it's not really, but it's kind of, is never quite forefronted enough to be interesting. Yeah, yeah, it is. And I'm not sure it was ever finished either.

It's kind of like- No, not at all. I'm more than human and more than werewolf, but you said that in episode one. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Oh, you have a new pack now when you kind of had that with Cherry already. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was quite, yeah, it was very inconsistent. And yeah, I think Carrot and Anguished is one of the things they did badly. I never really bought them. Yeah, there was no chemistry. Yeah, none at all. But then you got Carrot's character journey, which is the sort of thematic heart of the show.

And it's like meant to be, it should be in theory, the most interesting part of the show, because that's actually in theory, an interesting villain. But I never really cared. No, he says a lot of very interesting things. And then he spends most of the series looking for some stuff

with a more intelligent woman actually finding the stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right. I was much more interested in once's character. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it did kind of seem like they just sent him on a series of side quests, didn't they, through the whole thing. He was basically doing fetch quests.

Yeah. And that, yeah, that's meant to be the central spine of the story, isn't it? It's meant to be Carrot and what we assume are the auditors or inspired by the auditors. And thematically, that is the heart of the show, that is being an outsider, taking control of your destiny, living your true self.

That is very Pratchett, all of that stuff. It's just Pratchett does it with a set of beautifully sharpened, elaborately expensive pencils with incredible detail. And this show did it with sharpies. Yes. It was really blunt force, but Carter does have the most interesting line in the show.

I think he has the key line in the show where he says, the history of this world has already been Britain. There's no place for us here, which is, I think, like the most important line in the show because it emphasizes that theme of we don't belong in this world. This is a world that's designed for other people.

We are outsiders. We are being told the kind of people we are supposed to be. There is no role for us in this society, which is very, very disworld. But it's also literally true. The history of this world has already been written and there's no place for us here. That character, that version of Carter,

that, in fact, going into modern pop culture, that variant of Carter, because it does work very well when you think about in those terms, doesn't exist in the books at all. The Carter in the books is literally a different character, completely different character. What's in the books is a completely different character.

So it's a really interesting line. There's no plot. The history of this world has already been written. There's no place for us here. It's like they're admitting that they're taking it in a different direction. They're acknowledging the existence of the canon of books.

For those ones, especially, I must say, for Keele, for Carter, for once, apart from the fact the names are cool, I can't imagine why the names were used. I think for Carter and Keele, they wanted to incorporate that excuse for someone to be out of time. I guess, but I mean,

Keele was in it for all of 20 seconds, wasn't he? That one, I think, is the poorest choice they made, because I think it's a waste. Carter's an amazing character. Carter in the book is brilliant. He's purely brilliant. A genuinely menacing, unhinged, like the completely brilliantly written character.

And it would have been far better to have had that character in it at some point and actually done that story justice, than just give his name to somebody, to this kind of earnest, kind of fairly villainous, but slightly more complex, motivated, anti-hero kind of character.

There's nothing like, it doesn't make sense. I get why they're still called Lady Sybil, Lady Sybil, even though it's kind of a different. She's very different because of the relationship she has to Vimes. There are certain dragons, she's still an aristocrat. I don't like that they changed that character completely, but I do like the character they created,

and I do like Laura Rossi in it. But, yeah, Karsha once, I just felt like, give them different names, because... Because that's what really got under the skin, I think, of a lot of Pratchett fans as well, right at the start when they realized, oh, hey, this is my favorite book in most of their cases. Yeah.

It did feel like Winfrey. You've got a little princess run. Yeah, totally. You know, the plot of Night Watch is so good, and you didn't really have to do it. I think the... You could have cut the Karsha character completely. You could have cut all of the time travel.

In fact, you could have cut the Ultimate Vimes episodes, and everything with the sort of Auditor characters, and just done that story about the dragon with once trying to bring the dragon up with the most efficient of burning down the city because she doesn't like the guild system. And it would have been... They could have done God's God,

and they could have done it with that production design, with that cast, with those changes to those characters, and it would have been a lot more satisfying, and it would have set up, I think, the show to do somewhere more interesting if it's continued. And I actually really hope they would do that. I think the best way to do the main fences, to build bridges and main fences, but not build walls,

if they do a second season, is to be a little bit close, to take the characters in the world they've established, and they've got access to these beautiful, intricate, like perfectly plotted stories. Right, feet of clay. Just try that, yeah. They could do men of arms or feet of clay. Those are great stories.

They're self-contained, they're mysteries. The problem with this is it had too many stories. Have you seen American Horror Story? Yes, I've seen the first two seasons of that, yeah. Have you seen the second season of American Horror Story? Remind me which one it is. Asylum, sorry, it's asylum. Oh, yeah.

They threw everything at that series, and it feels a bit like that with the watch. Like, we'll have Cheery's realization of who they really are, and we'll have Vime's overcoming his feelings of his inadequacy about himself, and the class chip on his shoulder, and realizing who he can be,

and defeating his demons, and we'll have Lady Sibyl, who is coming to terms with what happened to her family, and realizing that she can't control the world, and actually seeing the chaos in Vime's, and responding to it. An anguished journey of being a werewolf. That's basically our journey.

And the dragons, and the time travel, and the auditors, and the harness. Yeah, and you've got Casa, and Once, and the auditors, and it's just that it's just too much. It's eight episodes, and I would much rather have either, that they stuck to a much more linear story, where every part seemed to have its place,

or they did Monster of the Week, because like they're a police force. Yeah, they're a police force. Be a procedural show. That would have been really satisfying as well. That could have worked fine. You could have even had Monster of the Week, plus there's a big bad dragon to deal with,

by the last episode. And there's been murmurings of that in the background. When's that coming back again? Exactly, yeah. You could foreshadow stuff. It could have worked really well, but actually every episode didn't feel self-contained. No, it felt like we have this one big pile of stories

we want to tell, and we're going to tell all of them over the six hours, rather than... It seems a shame to keep comparing it to Good Omens, but the problem is Good Omens, what Good Omens does so well, the watch does badly. And one of those is,

you said it, Good Omens is like watching one long film, and it kind of is. It took the same approach. We're going to tell one story cut into chunks, but it does it much more elegantly, much more satisfyingly. Each episode does work on its own,

and it guides you through this bigger story. And they have the little intros and outros. The emotional piece sit really well at the end of big episodes. Yeah, and it just works. And partly it's because they are taking those beats from a very well-plotted novel. And the watch does try to do the same thing,

but it doesn't. It feels like a hodge podge. It feels like a mess. I found that really unsatisfying. Something I found a bit frustrating, especially when I got to that very, very final scene in the show, because watching the show from the beginning...

Terrible fucking line from said all that, by the way. If you're still here when I get back, I was like, wow, that's a force. I feel like the writers just hate it here or something. Why did they give us such bad dialogue? I know, it's over. And there's one thing that Terry Pratchett never did is give people bad dialogue.

No, it was amazing dialogue writer. But yeah, when I was watching the show right until I got to the very end of it, it was like, oh, this kind of feels like they always felt like they probably wouldn't have a second season, or they were very much not finding a second season. So they put in as much as they can,

because they really want to tell all of these stories. It's obviously made by someone who has read all the books and really loves them and has taken certain things from them. But so they've desperately tried to cram in, like you said, stories from four or five different books and character arcs from four or five different books. And so right up until that final scene, I was thinking, oh, they've kind of made this on the basis

then might not get a season two or probably won't get a season two. Then they end it on a massive cliffhanger. What do you reckon of the cliffhanger mark? Were you expecting it or were you kind of, I was excited by it? I was kind of blindsided by it, although I saw it coming as it got closer.

But I kind of, at that point, I knew what the ratings had been. I'd been keeping an eye on the ratings in the States and they hadn't been good. The ratings in that show were not good. So that's the only thing that will get, will or won't get you a second series. Every time somebody says second series,

I just think about Anna Partridge. Give me a second series, your mother. I just, like, I knew it wasn't gonna, probably wasn't gonna get one. I was like, they are leaving things dangling here. They are leaving things to pick up. And then, yeah, there was that big cliffhanger, which when you don't know if you're having another season,

just feels unsatisfying. You could have had a subtle version of it, whereas instead of finds being disappeared out, you have ones looking serious and a bit demonic in the background. Yeah, that's what I was expecting when it showed that once was now the baddie. I was expecting like the tropey ending

where it's like, oh, a nice happy ending, Sam and Sibyl. And then fade to the evil laugh villain still alive. It's, yeah. I found that massively unsatisfying and kind of like disappointing writing as well. Yeah, and also like, if you, but like, don't do that Sibyl. Come on, don't do that, Sam.

Give them a fucking kiss, come on. You say that, but come on guys. Talking about the whole kind of chemistry issues. I wasn't that into the chemistry between those two either. I was going to ask, yeah. I like both the characters. I like how they were portrayed, despite some of the bad writing

and big changes from the books, but there was no chemistry between them. Then again, it's never written as kind of sizzling chemistry either in the book. No, true, but it's a... I think that works because of the book character of Sibyl. Yeah, that's true. Because of the matter of factness

and the kind of plain speaking, jolly hockey sticks version of Sibyl Ramkin in the book. I kind of still bought that relationship happening in those quiet moments, in a series of quiet moments as well. Yeah. Whereas this, because they rewrote the character into essentially a different character

who was inappropriately too young for vibes. I didn't actually look up the actor's ages to double track, but yeah. I think Lara Rossi is in her mid-30s and Richard Dormer is in his 50s. Yeah, there it is. Text book. Yeah, because they'd rebuilt Sibyl from the ground up,

her character, her version of Sibyl, that version of Lady Ramkin, wouldn't have a courtship like that. That would be a tempestuous and fiery relationship. That would be romance and tension, right? And it feels like they kind of tried to, they're doing the banter and we argue and the thing that I normally really loved,

like that's normally kept it to me and felt really flat, not as flat as Karen Angwer, which... Oh, Karen Angwer was non-existent. No, there was nothing there. I'll tell you what though, I'll say a nice thing. I was really glad that they made, they didn't make Sibyl the Virgin Sacrifice-y, what it, like the character Virgin, that makes more sense.

Good, let's not make the weird, creepy Virgin Bane thing. Yeah. The whole Virgin jokes running through it though, it started to get really irritating for me. In a way, I think that's still true to the spirit of what Guards, Guards was doing in 1989. Yeah.

I think the way God, like the setup of the world and parodying fantasy in 1989, making Sibyl the Sacrifice made sense. Like it's dated, but that's literally what I mean. It kind of, it sort of worked in that context and at that time, whereas it wouldn't work now. We have moved on. It would feel exploitative.

It would feel particularly exploitative for that Sibyl, but also, I don't think anyone is gonna believe, anyone is gonna believe like in a million years that that version of Lady Sibyl is a Virgin. Yeah. Yeah. Unless it also made to like an evangelical that you didn't mention until right now.

Yeah. Instead of the traditional podcast PowerPoints of Virginia C being a social construct. I think it's nice. But yeah, you'd like, you buy a book Sibyl because she is matronly and a little bit older and sort of socially awkward. She doesn't have time for that kind of nonsense.

Yeah. Yeah, she's been busy with her dragons. Yes. Yeah, exactly. And it kind of, that kind of works. Whereas, you know, almost if you wanted to reduce TV Sibyl to a series of tropes, you know, you'd use words like hot-blooded and feisty.

Oh yeah, she's definitely feisty. Fortunately, the actor was good enough to kind of overcome those kind of broad stroke characterizations, but yeah, I wouldn't think of her in those terms. And that's why that relationship didn't work because to me, they sparked in different ways. And I think you'd have to approach their courtship

in different ways. It would be more about chemistry. It would be more about, it would be more kind of, it'd be like an Indiana Jones movie. It'd be that kind of chemistry. Speaking of character chemistry that never really went anywhere.

It's a tritus, what do we think of the tritus? And that kind of, oh, we're losing the best friend, but was he? Yeah, like episode two, like if you're gonna kill off a major character, like let us get to know them first. Yeah, I sort of was explaining fridging to Francine earlier and it felt,

it's not quite fridging, you know, it's sort of got wife or a girlfriend, but it's very, very, and fridging is for the listeners, it's this idea of killing off a significant woman normally in a main character's life to motivate them and give them a tragic backstory. And this idea of killing off the tritus to kind of motivate Sam doesn't have the emotional weight

that the show wants it to have, because yeah, you've only spent an episode with the tritus. Yeah, and I like- And it just didn't seem to impact finds that much afterwards either. Yeah, I liked the backstory they built in for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, you have to let go of the fact

that it's not the tritus from the book, but I think you have to let go of that entirely anyway and just stop worrying about it, otherwise you're never gonna get anything from that show. Yeah, yeah. But I like that they made them old friends, that he was the troll under the bridge. But yeah, he should have been killed in episode five.

Yeah, that would have been a better piece of motivation than killing off someone that the audience don't care about yet and trying to use sad music to compensate. Yeah, and I'd have cared. Yeah. Also, I might have got to like that character more because I'd seen him more.

And I also would have been annoying. It was more annoying than anything else because you're like, oh, this is an interesting version of the tritus. I like what they're doing with him. I kind of like who this guy is. Let's see how this develops and then- Whoops.

No. Go on. Anyway, yeah, because I was like, oh, cool, so they're not doing like the all me big troll thing. That's good, honestly, because that would have been hard to do. And yeah, I like the, what was it, Yorkshire accent?

I was, I shouldn't guess it, Northern accents. I'm going to say Yorkshire accent. I think it was, yeah. Yeah. I quite liked the way the CGI was done, actually. I didn't think that looked cheap or clumsy. Looked like a troll. Yeah.

It looks pretty much how I imagined the trolls. Except he was made of stone and then died from a couple of arrow shells, but you know what I mean. Yeah, that bit, not so much. That's, again, it's just a, it's very telling of that show in that it's a ten, in that it falls apart on the details a lot.

Yeah. Like you shouldn't have been able to, you shouldn't be able to kill detritus with arrows. Like if you're going to create a character from rock, and if you are going to do that, bearing in mind a substantial amount of the audience, maybe not a substantial amount, but certainly a lot of the audience

will be familiar with the books and know that, and will go, oh, he's a troll. He's detritus. He's made of rock. You're going to have to try and like undo that for people so that they understand that he's in peril. Cause I didn't think he was in peril. I didn't know she was going to die.

Yeah. And I felt like they were trying to do the beat from men at arms where they're trying to shot in the warehouse and he's going to die if he doesn't get help. But it's because he's cooling down so much and the fact that he's being shot a kind of incidental. And also, but also he's shot with a gun in men's eyes.

Yeah. Yeah. The other big detail. Yeah. And that was also kind of a device to show like how powerful the gun was that this thing made of stone was now wounded from it. But yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And so, yeah, it just, I was, yeah, I thought it was, I thought it threw away that character. I don't mean to throw away the character from the book. I mean, it threw away the character it's up in the show. Yeah.

I thought it was, I thought they did him well in the one where he was there again. The time travel. I can't remember which one that was for. Yeah. The multiverse. Yeah. Yeah.

But it kind of speaks to that sort of no one is ever really dead in a fantasy series thing. Because there's, okay, we can pinch them back from other, we can pinch them back from other legs of the trousers at the time. You know, it's like. There'll be a covariance somewhere. Yeah, exactly.

We can, we can always find a way to bring anyone back we want to. I imagine we'll see Karser again if they do another series. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's, I don't know what you mean. I have a question.

I'm a, are the you two, I assume you probably are but are you familiar with the 2000s Sky TV adaptions of Discworld books? Yes. Yes. Well, I've seen not all of them because we're watching them as we get to that. But I've seen all of them, but you've seen Color of Magic.

You've seen Color of Magic been like fantastic. Yeah, I've seen it. You've not seen Going Place to the Law Huck Father. Which I'm told. Which, yeah, well I was gonna say which for me is the least successful of the three because David, David Chasen is not, David Chasen is not Ritz Whit.

It's the worst casting, doesn't make sense. I was a massive fucking grump about it, I'll be honest. I was. I drank a lot when I recorded that. Yeah, Ritz, yeah. I mean, aside from that, cause so I think Huck Father and Going Postal especially are very accurate versions of stories.

And where they make changes, the changes make sense. They get the details right, yeah. But I found both of them in a way, kind of unsatisfying in a different way to how I found the watch and satisfying. And I wondered if that was something you would, because I think what they, they are almost an example of why the, of why straight,

they moved away from doing a straight adaption of any of the books. Because I think those TV dramas are fan service. I think if you haven't read the books, they, they're not great. Huck Father especially, because, you know, the actual plot of Huck Father is one of the, I mean, it's not the most convoluted, but it's not one of the most linear plots.

And you've got to understand a lot of pre-built in disc world stuff about the nature of belief. Exactly. And Going Postal works best, works better because it's a much more, it's a much more of a wrong. It's a linear story and there's lots of action. There's lots of visual stuff to do. Yeah, there's very few established characters.

And the ones that are things like veterinary and it's Charles Dance, who's perfect casting. But everything, but it's like all the time. It's, it's, it's, it's Tywin Lannister. Yeah. Being Lord Veterinary, it's literally like, it's just Tywin Lannister. Brief tangent, but highly recommend.

Jay Rainer's out to lunch podcast, had Charles Dance on it a couple of weeks ago and listening to Jay Rainer interview Charles Dance while they used to fancy lunch is just really, really soothing. Possibly the poshest thing that's ever happened. Yeah. It's incredibly posh, but it's very relaxing. I know, yeah.

Every time Charles Dance comes on screen, screen in Game of Thrones, you just go out. Some acting is going to happen. Yeah. Here we go. It's when you've got Charles Dance and Diana Rape doing scenes together. And it's just, oh, I can just happily watch this scene.

It isn't really matter about. This play would have been great. So what was it that left you feeling unsatisfied about those TV ones? Because I felt like they did, they took a swing at being literal adaptions of the books. And because those stories aren't necessarily television and Joanna is absolutely right.

I think Hogfather is especially, there's a lot of metaphysics going on in Hogfather. There's a lot of quite rich stuff about the nature of belief, particularly that whole, the last section. And I think they had that sort of thing in mind when they eventually, there was not really at any point in discussion of doing this show as straight adaptions of books.

It was originally going to be sequels. It was going to be its own thing. And then it's going to be a brand new thing that takes inspiration from the book. And I can see what they were trying to do with that. I can see, because it's a very, it's a very televisual show. It's like, it's entirely about the production design. It's so bright, everything happened.

Like the screen is crammed with cool stuff. Like it looks brilliant. The character design is really good. There's Easter eggs everywhere as well. Like it does feel like the person intended to make something very nice for fans. And there's a lot of... Yeah, absolutely. But it has the grammar of television.

And in a way that those early discworld adaptions, other discworld adaptions doesn't. They don't really have the grammar of television. They look either, they look like sort of cheap films, essentially. They've got their charm and they get Discworld right in terms of the visual thing. It looks exactly like the world you imagine. But I wouldn't let my brother showing them to someone

who's not already at least slightly a Discworld fan. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And the joy in those is in watching the world come to life. Whereas this had to do something different. And I think it uses the grammar of television really well. It's visually really get really stunning. It tells its stories through imagery.

Like the scene where the dance-off at the end of episode six with Cherry, it's this ultimate post-modern image of this figure with a full beard and wearing glittery thigh boots and dancing. And it's this complete gender mash-up of stuff. And it tells the story and the entire, the story is encoded into the images. And I think the show does that a few times quite well

of just having this grammar of television. Which is why it really frustrates me in how much the ball is dropped narratively. Because the set-up is so good. And I'd actually rather have a show that takes those ideas and takes the inspirations and those themes and applies them to a proper television narrative. Did you watch Dirk gently?

The... Which version of Dirk gently? The more recent one, the Netflix-y. I saw the first season. Yeah. I didn't. That's the kind of thing where I thought they did the tone of it really well. While not at all trying to follow.

Yeah, absolutely. At all, because it would have been silly. I mean, it was silly in a different way. But none of the actual straight adaptations of Dirk, like they tried to adapt Dirk gently for TV twice. Or at least I think once for radio and once for TV, I think. Harry Enfield played Dirk gently on radio and then Stephen Mangan played it on TV, which is good casting.

But it never quite worked. No, it wasn't quite there. Whereas, yeah, the tone of that show was the tone of those books. It was... And they had to move away from that. I love that, actually, there's a really great throwaway line in one of the first episodes

where Elijah Woods' character asks him about his past. He's like, well, there was a thing with the time-travelling sofa and I met Thor. And then just... And then he's off. Yeah, an acknowledgement of former adventures. Yeah. Yeah, I think that did what the watch was trying to do better.

Although it didn't have to be as ambitious because it didn't have the complete fantasy setting. That's true. Yeah, it was more speculative fiction in a... Yeah, it was still two people in contemporary clothing walking down a contemporary street. Yeah, you didn't have to reinvent the world for it. I feel like I read somewhere or heard somewhere

that a lot of the aesthetic of the city is just because they ended up having to film in South Africa or something or... That, I guess, wouldn't be... I'm not sure that... I mean, possibly, the sets, the actual city itself, looks like a soundstage to me. It's a really good soundstage.

I don't think that was dictated by it. But yeah, they go out into the desert. All the deserts and the... I really didn't like that bit at all. I thought that was a... It was a... But it just didn't make any sense to me. Narratively, I just didn't understand

what was happening. It was very pretty. It was very... It really stole to the story. It was just starting to get going and really starting to ramp up. And then you had sort of an episode of... We're just going to pause everything quickly.

This is an interesting place to stick in all that backstory. Yeah. I was like, well, now you're going to care about the characters as we reach the climax. I was like, oh, thank you. Also, ooh. But... Yes, I still don't...

Drama dumping, that's... The characters I cared about already and the characters I didn't know amount of drama dumping. And it was over the top with the tragic backstories for all of the characters. Yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, see, now I'm really, like, on the verge of tears with Angkor there,

but also I don't care anymore about her. That's just a really awful thing to watch. Yeah, it still didn't make me... It still didn't make me care about Angkor. I kind of liked Carrot because I think they kind of... You know, it's kind of... He didn't have the dazzling charisma, but in terms of being the innocent,

the kind of wide-eyed, innocent naive, but also massive and a bit hard, that seemed to be Carrot for me, but I didn't really care about Angkor. She seemed very cool. The actor seemed really good. Yeah. I liked that there was something happening there.

I thought that had potential, but I never cared about her as a character. The werewolves thing, they handled really oddly, I think, because the thing about Angkor's kind of werewolf powers and the transformations and that, I think, in the books was a lot more subtle. There were a lot more rules to it that kind of made sense in the stories,

whereas this one, she has a good sense of smell and don't let the moon hit her, except that it wasn't relevant ever in the plot. Yeah, and actually, wasn't there the whole... There was kind of the almost prisoner of Azkaban thing at the beginning. Yeah, yeah. Where she had scratched all over her back for some reason.

There was the library and the librarian, and she was in there. The whole universe. And she ended up killing a bunch of people in there, didn't she? But that was on purpose. And then she woke up in the grit and the dirt, spitting out mud. That was the scene I really hated.

They wanted to obviously make her more vulnerable and make the werewolf thing more tragic for her, and they did it by, let's make the blonde woman naked and covered in mud. Yeah, because obviously they did. Yeah, obviously it was a blonde woman that needed to be naked and covered in mud. There's no other character to be naked at any point,

but that's how you show vulnerability for a werewolf. Yeah. I mean, it's actually in a way a depressingly attractive cast as well, isn't it? And nobody, everybody in that cast was quite good looking. Like, yeah, they didn't, I know on kind of, they, I mean, there's been a, there was a lot of talk online,

and it's one of the most justifiable criticism show were raising Sybil as being a older, larger woman. Yeah. I've had that run many, many times. It's like the one progressive barrier they couldn't reach was putting a fat, lady on the tally. Yeah.

And it's like, apparently that's a step too far, that's too controversial. If we'd have cast a character who was the same age as Vimes, like, oh, no one's going to buy that, no one's going to care for their relationship. Well, we have to make her, you know, badass. She has to be a badass woman. And like, you know, I don't dislike the character.

And I, but, I did find myself thinking at least she's not 21 at one point. Yeah, exactly. I had no problem with any of the other sort of flips and changes they did with characters. I didn't mind the kind of the colorblind casting. I didn't mind the gender swaps any, in any point. None of that really impacted the characters for me,

but it was, but it was not having the courage to cast a fat middle-aged woman and making her a love interest. That would have been bold. That would have been something really admirable. And there were enough young attractive people in that show that they're not losing the show's sex appeal by having a middle-aged woman in it as well.

Yeah, you have a lot of hot people there. And I'm sort of torn between, I would really love to see fat middle-aged civil and I'm really glad that I didn't see a fat middle-aged civil with that writing because I feel like the jokes around it would have gotten old. And I feel like those jokes would have been, I mean, I started struggling with them in guards, guards

and pointing up a few of the ones I wasn't a big fan of. I feel like that would have been there in the show. I would still rather have it than not have it, but I do feel like it would have probably not been handled well based on the writer. It doesn't have a lightness of touch, does it, this show? It's not very deft. I think that's the fundamental issue with it.

And I think that's why it was so disappointing. I don't mind the theory. This is why I differ from a lot of fans who hated the idea that you take bits from different books, you would change the story and you'd recast the characters and change things. I was prepared to accept that. I didn't mind it.

But if it had been done, if it had been done really well, what I think was the biggest missed opportunity of the whole project was that you take these stories that have broad brush, big jokes and silly stuff and big action set pieces, but actually the characters are nuanced. The plots are really delicately constructed. They tick.

Neil Gaiman is quite about ticking like Swiss watches, particularly in the later ones. There's real depth to them and real detail. And nothing in a Discworld novel ever doesn't make sense. It always works in and of itself. You never have that moment where you go, hang on. But if that's like that, how come that's like that? Perhaps it was too good for that.

He would just, yeah, his mind was too meticulous. He never left anything on the table that wasn't used. He never underserved his characters. He never set up plots that didn't quite work or weren't resolved. I'm not saying that he's writing is perfect. I'm not saying there aren't faults. And there are, oh, that some of it has an age as eight.

I know you took a lot on the podcast about the elements, especially in the older books, that haven't aged particularly well. And let's not let him off the hook, but the plots work. Yeah. He's a very good editor. He edited his own work very well. Yeah.

I've run over again obsessively. And that's the thing with the show. It doesn't feel edited. It doesn't feel satisfying. It's got a lot of stuff that doesn't bear close scrutiny. And that's disappointing. And I don't, you know, that's, Doctor Who does that too?

Like, and so does Star Wars, Marvel films sometimes do that as well. And that's- They've got the good will already. They can afford to do it. Yeah. That's fine, but- I mean, Doctor Who, you can afford to do it

because it's going on so long. You're not ever looking for a big satisfying conclusion in the same way. Yeah. And I, you know, there are things that you're enjoying yourself so you don't pay too much attention. And then if you pay, and then a little bit later, you pay attention and you go,

oh, hang on, that didn't quite know that. But, you know, Pratchett books don't do that ever. And I really, really wanted that from the show. And if they'd done that, if it had hung together in that way, if they'd have managed to pull off that balancing act, I would have forgiven it all of its problems of changing things and magpying

and the dismissal of certain sacred cows of this world. I would have forgiven it anything if it had done it well. And it didn't. There's stuff in that that doesn't make sense. The tone shifts too much. There's too much that is just unsatisfying. And that's what bothers me the most about it.

Yeah. It's frustrating because you can see a lot of potential there. There's lots of really good beginnings of things. And if someone had maybe just put a hand on someone else's knee and said, no, it's okay, stop now. Yeah. And then someone else had edited the fuck out of it. And I said, probably taken out about three of the storylines.

It could have been, and I showed them, start to finish. For example, let's not have Angua be aware of for the beginning. Let's have hints that Angua is aware of that I never explored and I left for another day. Because that could be season two. That would make that character so much more interesting. Like there's something going on with her and we don't quite know what it is.

And that would be far, far more interesting. One thing I did like though is the only thing where it actually properly like did a twist around, did a twist around your expectations is the carrot is king point. I liked that. Yeah. Yeah.

That was nice though. I'm a special boy. Yeah. I like that a lot because I think you'd possibly, because that character wouldn't really work on the screen. Like the only way to, the only way to have got over the charisma that Kara has in the book is by casting a genuine movie star.

Yeah. Like you'd need to cast the role. John Hamm's 20 years younger. Yeah. You'd need to cast somebody with that level of like sheer Hollywood charisma. Like when they, the reason they cast Zac Efron as that serial killer, his name, I've just...

Ted Bundy. Yeah. The reason they cast Zac Efron as Ted Bundy, Ted Bundy wasn't as sexy as Zac Efron. No, he was gross and stupid. But he had magnetism. And the only way they could accurately portray that magnetism is by casting somebody

who had that star quality. Because that was the only way you could portray the magnetism that Bundy had to the audience. That's it. You can write it in a book and say, this guy is supernaturally charismatic. Yeah. But unless you can cast like Chris Evans

or Chris Hemsworth or one of the other Chris's, you're not gonna, you can't. Yeah. Just pick a Chris. Chris Packham. Maybe not Chris Pratt. Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe not Chris Pratt. No. Chris Packham. I'd like to see Chris Packham do it. Yeah. Chris Rear. Chris Felea. Bring him back.

Well, I'll see no necromancy on the podcast. We discussed this. We tried it once. But yeah, I would, like, so I liked that. I liked what they, I thought, I thought, and they just didn't like, you know what? We don't, this version of carrot works. We don't have to add in an extra element.

Some of the audience will know that in the books, he's actually the heir to the throne. So let's tease that and then let's take it away. And that, actually, that was good writing. I liked that. And then you'd hope that in later series, that character would have the room to develop. Yeah.

And I'm fine with that. That's good. That's nice. Like Rory and Doctor Who, you know? Yes. Rory in season five of Doctor Who, you don't really care about, he's a bit irritating. Rory by season, by season seven of Doctor Who,

you're completely in love with. I'd like to, they could have done, with Anger and with Carrot, they could have done that. Like they didn't have to throw everything at every single character. And Carrot was the only one where they actually went, you know, this guy works, which just leave him as he is. Yeah.

Oh, well. So in summary, I'm gonna say, I quite enjoyed watching some of it. I didn't, okay. I did not hate it as much as I was expecting to. I went in with low expectations because of everybody's feedback over the last six months or whatever it's been.

And I watched it while admittedly also doing some painting and stuff. Like I couldn't sit down and just watch all of that all my attention. So while I was doing that at the same time, it was fine, it was good. I enjoyed the visuals of it. I thought they were really well done.

I did not hate the show as much as I expected to. And I think I've been a lot more cheerful than Joanna expected me to this evening. Yes, very much so. I mean, so again, some summary, but I did enjoy it. Like I would watch another series of it if another series happened.

It obviously has its flaws that we pointed out, but it's not a band show and it's not the attack on disc world that I think a lot of the fandom has treated it as. Yeah, yeah. I think its heart is in the right place. Yeah. And that I think it's something

that people have kind of missed. Yeah. That it's kind of gone, what is the theme of these books? And that's something that for various reasons I've been thinking about a lot this week. If anyone, I don't know when this is going up. If you've been following me on Twitter, you'll know.

So yeah, if you've been following me on Twitter for the last week, at 20th Century Mark, like the theme of the books is something I've been thinking about, that they're about living to be your true self. They're about outsiders. They're about not fitting in. They're about stories, the nature of stories,

the nature of narrative, and whether you're a part of somebody else's story and whether you're in your own story and all that kind of thing. And I felt like that was central to the show. They got that right for me. And that I liked. I just wish they'd written it better.

Yep. What was your least favorite thing? Oh. Fucking Wayne. Oh, it's about Wayne. We haven't even talked about Wayne. Oh, wow. I love Matt Berry.

Something with Matt Berry in, and I literally forgot about him. That is really saying something. It's very rare we record an episode of the podcast where I don't do a Matt Berry impression. Yeah, I know. It's like pathological, I can't. I'm sorry, it's a sickness.

But anyway, back when we did Color of Agic and fucking Kring, who I went through, oh, this is kind of funny to hating in the space of one podcast episode. Bear in mind, I barely remember recording our episodes of Color of Agic, but I remember fucking Kring. And Wayne was just Kring.

It was like an excuse to have some funny swear words in the background. Yeah. It's like they brought in the worst, tragic character. It didn't work in the context of the world they created. That's why Kring, that's why Wayne is so annoying.

Because it's a fantasy trope. It's a big fantasy fantasy thing that doesn't fit. This version of the watch is not a Lord of the Rings parody. Yeah, no. In the way that, you know, it isn't a kind of subtolking parody in the way that the first dozen or so discord novels are.

Yeah. So having a fantasy magic sort, in the same way as having like seven league boots or whatever, or any of those kind of slightly now fantasy ideas that Project was sending up in the early stories. Yeah, it just didn't... Then they fared into Monty Python

with like the hand and the leg. It was really Monty Python. No, it was funny. Which I don't get a lot of that actually, I don't get a lot of that. But there was, you know, Python was in there. I think Python was in the mix. I don't think they went the tone of that show,

but I think Python's in the mix of Good Omens as well, but it does it very, but... Yes. That's because Neil Gaiman, because there is this direct lineage from like, from Python, a particularly grown Chapman to Douglas Adams to Neil Gaiman. They're almost like protégés of each other.

There is an element of Python in the DNA of Good Omens, but I think it comes in through Gaiman, who kind of has that sort of, has connections to that sort of background. But yeah, it's that kind of thing of self-consciously anarchic. In the same way that the beginning in the prologue, not the prologue,

the dedication at the beginning of equal rights says this book isn't wacky. It's not zany. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wacky is a word used for dumb redheads in 1956 comps. And I think madcap and anarchic, you know. Yeah, madcap, like a madcap. Those are, I think they were thinking of things like that.

They were like, okay, so let's, what are the, on the mood board for the show, there was, there would have been Python, there would have been the young ones. There would have been, there would have been the Mighty Boosh, as I said, loads of the Mighty Boosh. There would have been Dr. Who.

All of that was in the mix. And it just didn't feel quite right to me. It was a bit self-conscious. Yes. So what about you, Mark? Best and worst parts and all? Best part, Joey and Kent as Cherry. I think they are a star.

I genuinely do. I think they can do something really good. They own that role completely. They transcend the show. To me, every line is delivered beautifully. Like, and obviously it's an important story for them to tell because they're, because they're non-binary. So telling a non-binary story was obviously important to them.

And you can, so I guess you feel that authenticity, but they also, like, they're intrinsically funny and it looked great. So I, yeah, I was massively convinced. I really wanted them to play the doctor. And also, thematically, I like the fact that they did get that theme of outsiders and stories and narratives and living your truth and all that sort of thing.

My least favorite thing was veterinary by a long way. Because I like Hannah Chancellor and I was really excited when they cast her. And when she said, I'm going to be, who wouldn't want to play somebody who is a cross between Elvis and Dracula? And I was like, okay, that's an interesting interpretation of the character.

And I was just kind of like, okay. So I don't think gender swapping Lord Veterinary makes the slightest bit of difference. So the character is essentially asexual anyway. Yeah, they continue to call her Lord throughout. Yeah, the gender swapping. And I actually thought that was really interesting. Also, there was pictures of veterinary

with basically pictures of book veterinary on the walls. Very gender fluid vibes I was getting. Yeah, so I didn't mind that in the slightest. I just thought it was such a missed opportunity because veterinary is such a good character. And if they'd have gone down the Charles Dance route, which is basically the character. Yeah, the Charles Dance, Alan Rickman, that kind of.

I would have loved to have seen Hannah Chancellor do that as well. I think she would have done it brilliantly. And when I heard she was being cast, I was like, she can do that. She's perfect for that sort of thing. And actually, I don't know what they did with that character. I don't have a clue who that character was. No, they didn't seem to impact the plot.

Yeah, it wasn't like they created a new character in the same way they did with Casa or with Lady Sibyl. Or they all they adapted an existing character but sort of kept the fundamentals like they did with Anguera. It'll cheer you. A less competent version of veterinary. Yeah, I just didn't. I just didn't know who that little veterinary was.

Somewhere around the red fluffy robe and the headphones in the cell. Yeah, it didn't feel like the joy of veterinary in the book character is that he's always ahead of the game. He's always, you know, he's he's always like he's not just he's not just like 100 moves ahead of you. He's playing three games along. You know, he's why you had to kind of reverse

Deus Ex machina him for guards guards. Yes, that's true. Is there an actual word for that, Joanna? Quite possibly. OK, cool. Thank you. The reverse Deus Ex machina. Machina ex Deus. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, and I just I just like it just wasted a character and a really good actor in a character that didn't contribute to the plot and didn't do anything interesting and was a bit silly. And I just because veterinary is such a good character. And if you get to change a good character to have a reason for it, I get why they changed Anguera. I think there was some I think maybe if you'd have cast Anguera in the classic Nordic blonde kind of because Anguera is a bit of a bombshell.

Yeah, exactly. And it would have been a bit. I think Anguera is probably a bit too sexy in the books. I it's never really kind of you never really buy her as a real person almost because of that. She's there's a bit she's there's a bit of a pin up quality. Yeah, there's always that always has to be the reactions of the men where she walks. Yeah, exactly.

You know, the asplendent although they you know, they're a hot couple clearly. Yeah, like somebody's discord slash Vic. There is no not looking at it. We have rules on. I'm already logged into Tumblr now. But yeah, I liked I like the fact they reimagined Anguera. And they they they went for something that was visually very a very different kind of kind of person and a very different look.

And yeah, I liked that. But I know I could see what they were doing with it. But I had no clue why they did that with it. And I just think there's a waste of it was a waste of a character and a waste of a really good actor. Yeah, yes, definitely agree on that. Would you want to see a second season? Joe will make me watch it, but I have my own accord.

No, I wouldn't bother watching it. I'm not desperate for one, but I will happily watch if there is one. And I would be curious to see if they could iron out the big pile of cakes. Yeah, yeah, that's it. I think I think I'm in broad agreement. Yeah, I mean, I'm always a fan of a bit of a big pile of cakes in this case. I think it's kind of taken. Yeah, I saw.

No, I saw I saw a big pile of cakes at the Great Yarmouth Tribute Weekend alongside the bootleg Beatles and the High on Maiden. But yeah, I would like I think they deserve a second go at it. But I think but if they drop the ball again, I would like I think they have the opportunity that they could have the opportunity to fix it because the world is so good. Like the world, the production design looks great. The performances are great.

They've got the cast. Yeah, I just I think they could do something really great. I've got a suspicion that they did get a second series. They wouldn't. But yeah, anything to plug, where can we find you on the Internet? So Twitter at 20th Century Mark, and that is Mark with a C. My book, The Magic of Terry Pratchett will be out on paper. But my award winning book, The Magic of Terry Pratchett will be out

on paperback at the end of August. So you'll be able to get that from all the usual book places. But I'm timing. Get it from get it from me, particularly, because I've got I've bought a bunch of copies to resell. Ask me about Terry Pratchett.com. Exactly, yes. And that'll also be things to preorder my next book, I think. And also, I've got a newsletter, which you should sign up for,

which is if you get a tiny letter dot com forward slash 20th Century Mark. Good to know. I highly recommend signing up for it. Some lovely writing. Thank you. I don't know. And we want to think of all the things in the show notes, of course. It's it's the thing that keeps me pitching articles. So I've got something to put in my next in my next newsletter. That's a really good way of motivating yourself.

I never want to have a newsletter. I go, actually, I've not written anything this month to link to. Are we trying to at least pitch one film review? So I've got something to put in there. I think that's everything we've got for today. Obviously, we are going to do a more in depth and look at the watch, probably episode by episode in January. Francine, can't wait for that.

God, I love in-depth TV or ACAPs. We'll be back on the 6th of September with our first episode on Masquerade, which is nice and hopefully won't be problematic. No, I love Masquerade. I can't wait to talk about Masquerade. I just re-edited the first upside and in the first episode of our podcast, I did put that down as one of my favourites that I don't often do. So I was in a Masquerade mood at the start.

Excellent. So yes, homework for listeners. Go and watch Phantom of the Opera, the anniversary version from the Royal Abbot. Oh, I should do that. The movie. And Some Mothers Do Haven. Yes. Watch Some Mothers Do Haven and work out the link between the two. OK, OK, this is new homework for me.

Oh, have you not realised that? Uh-uh. Oh, it's my favourite thing about Masquerade. OK. Do you know that one, Joanne? No, I've not noticed that link at all. I haven't watched Some Mothers Do Haven until I... You know, it's not since I was a kid.

So, yeah, I'll re-watch it. Can I explain it? OK, yeah, I'll beef it out, though. OK. I'm going to Outro us because my laptop is a dangerously long factory. Good, OK. I'll stop thinking of things to say, sorry. No, no, sorry, I normally wouldn't be an issue,

but I don't want to cut out mid-Outro. I don't know, it's kind of dramatic. I like it, Cliffhanger. Oh, now she likes Cliffhangers. Like, no, she'll be back next week. I hope she will. I'll be in the group chat in five minutes, that's it. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The True Show, Make You Frekt. You can follow us on Instagram at The True Show, Make You Frekt, on Twitter at Make You FrektPod, on Facebook at The True Show, Make You Frekt. Join our subreddit community, r slash ttsmyf. Email us your thoughts, queries, castles, albatrosses and snacks, The True Show, Make You Frekt, bought at gmail.com and support us on Patreon, patreon.com,

forward slash The True Show, Make You Frekt. And until next time, dear listener. Don't let me detain you. Neil Gaiman is the Obi-Wan Kenobi to Douglas Adams' Qui-Gon Jinn to Graham Chapman's Count Dooku. That's the nerdiest thing I am going to say on this podcast by a long way. And the expression on both of your faces, like, this is going to be the cut scene, isn't it? That's going to be the thing you use.

I want to say something equally cool and nerdy back, but I don't know, Star Wars very well.