Television series

His Dark Materials

Name: His Dark Materials
Genre: Drama, Adventure, Fantasy
Released: 2019
Cast: Dafne Keen, Ruth Wilson, Amir Wilson, Will Keen, Ariyon Bakare

Fantasy

A prestige BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman's trilogy: a fierce orphan girl, a boy from another world, talking bears, flying witches and a Church that tortures children to sever them from their souls. It's expensive, serious-minded fantasy that treats theology and physics as adventure fuel, aimed at smart teens and the adults who read the books first.

TVMaze rating

3.9

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love fantasy that treats big questions about God, conscience and growing up as seriously as its armoured bears and parallel-world journeys, and you don't mind a story that is slow to reveal its cards.

Skip it if you want self-contained episodes or quick payoffs; this is a long, serialised build across three seasons, and its first stretch can feel like setup before the larger story catches fire.

What it asks of you: Each episode runs close to an hour, and the series asks you to hold a lot of unexplained detail across many hours, following a sprawling cast through several worlds.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Good Omens2019

Same British fondness for putting cosmic theology through a domestic, funny, deeply humane lens. Angels, demons, the end of the world, and a genuine argument about free will underneath the jokes.

But Comic tone throughout means it never sits with dread the way HDM does; expect warmth over stakes.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe2005

The template this genre keeps returning to: children step through a doorway into another world and end up deciding its moral fate. Handsome, sincere, built for the same audience.

But Its Christian allegory runs the opposite direction from Pullman's, and the effects now look their age.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe poster

A Series of Unfortunate Events2017

Children navigate a world of indifferent or actively hostile adults with wit, dread, and real intelligence — a darker, funnier cousin to Lyra's fight against institutional cruelty.

But Its arch, storybook artifice is a deliberate choice but keeps you at more distance than HDM's earnestness.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from His Dark Materials

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

A Brief History of Time1991

HDM's multiverse and 'Dust' dramatise real questions about consciousness, particles and parallel worlds; this film is where those ideas actually live, stripped of story.

Errol Morris's documentary on Stephen Hawking turns cosmology and multiple universes into genuine wonder and dread — the real-world physics that Pullman's Dust and parallel worlds are quietly borrowing from.

But No plot, no children, no adventure — just ideas, and it demands patience with abstract physics.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone2001

The other great British child-hero-versus-hidden-world franchise, gentler and more whimsical but built from the same bones: orphaned protagonist, secret society, a war coming.

But Considerably softer and safer in tone; nobody here is severing a child's soul from their animal familiar.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone poster

The Witcher2019

If you want the adult register HDM only flirts with — brutal multiverse politics, prophecy, monsters, and a fierce young woman at the centre of it all.

But Much more violent and sexually explicit, and its timeline-jumping structure takes patience to untangle.

Shadow and Bone2021

Multiple young protagonists, a richly imagined alternate world, and an oppressive power structure hunting a gifted girl — YA fantasy with the same appetite for worldbuilding.

But Leans harder into romance subplots and adventure pacing; less interested in theology or moral philosophy.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance2019

Extraordinary puppetry and practical effects create a world as tactile and strange as Pullman's, with the same sense of a whole cosmos under threat.

But Slower and stranger paced, and puppetry over CGI may feel like a big tonal shift.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance poster

Watership Down2018

Animals with their own society, mythology and mortal stakes, treated with total seriousness — a good companion to how HDM takes daemons and armoured bears just as gravely.

But Bleaker and more violent than its family-friendly reputation suggests, and entirely animal-focused.

Carnival Row2019

A fantasy world used to talk about real prejudice and institutional persecution, in the noir register — the closest mainstream cousin to Pullman's political anger.

But Grittier, more adult, and its allegory is heavier-handed than HDM's.

Pan's Labyrinth2006

Both use a child's fantastical alternate world as a way to process real institutional cruelty; Pullman softens what del Toro refuses to.

A girl escapes into a dark fairy-tale world to survive fascism in her own — the same structure as Lyra's journey, but pushed into full adult horror and historical atrocity.

But Genuinely violent and upsetting in ways aimed at adults, with no reassurance that childhood innocence wins.

Coraline2009

Both stories hinge on a seductive, controlling maternal figure across a doorway to another world; this is that same horror shrunk to stop-motion scale.

A girl finds a parallel world with a monstrous substitute mother who wants to possess her completely — stop-motion animation doing exactly what Mrs Coulter does to Lyra, in miniature.

But Shorter, simpler, and pitched younger, though its imagery is unexpectedly nightmarish for a kids' film.