The first things anyone notices about The Watch is how much it deviates from Terry Pratchett’s books. It riles up the Discworld fans up something terrible. I read a bunch of Discworld books when I was a teenager and don’t remember them all that well, and the changes are pretty blatant even to me.
Instead of going for a broad parody of high medieval fantasy literature, The Watch takes place in a grimy apocalyptic punk reality. Characters vaguely match their roles from the books, and story elements are loosely shuffled together, but the show is mostly doing its own thing. For what its worth, I don’t care about breaking away from the source material. The Colour of Magic wound up being a garbage tv adaptation because it faithfully reflected Pratchett’s weakest and most dated novel. In fact so far there has been only one change in The Watch that bothered me, which was the decision to cast the tallest actor they could find to play the role of the dwarf Cheery. This decision undermines the entire joke behind Captain Carrot, whose shtick is that he’s is a huge burly man who thinks he’s a dwarf. Considering how diminutive Corporal Angua’s actor is, I don’t understand why she couldn’t have just been cast as Cheery, instead of the show having to include some confusing handwave explanation that dwarfs come in all sizes.
As to the looks, I’ve seen a lot of adaptations go with post-apocalyptic punk aesthetics. At least half dozen of them are Shakespeare performances. It is always for the same reason: it saves the production a ton of money on costumes and sets, making everything out of garbage. The problem is that all these adaptations look the same. This show presumably had a pitiful budget, and it really shows, looking like every amateur stage production I’ve ever seen.
As to the story, I was just about interested enough to keep watching. There are some sparks of imagination here and there, and some of the show’s interpretations of characters and locales are pretty cool. The show’s biggest weakness though is comedy. Jokes are one of the few things you don’t need a massive budget for, and this show just doesn’t manage to pull off that many funny gags. Some are borrowed from the book and just fall flat on screen. Some are from the book and they’ve simply become too dated to be funny to a 2020 audience. But a lot are original gags that just don’t land very well, either being lame in concept or just badly edited and delivered. This show only manages to be occasionally funny, which is a crying shame as we could do with a strong high fantasy parody these days.
There is potential here, and by a second season, I can imagine the writers and actors getting into their stride. Right now, it feels like The Colour of Magic probably comes across to a new reader; a bit weak, but maybe worth sticking around for more.
Who Watched It?
The first things anyone notices about The Watch is how much it deviates from Terry Pratchett’s books. It riles up the Discworld fans up something terrible. I read a bunch of Discworld books when I was a teenager and don’t remember them all that well, and the changes are pretty blatant even to me.
Instead of going for a broad parody of high medieval fantasy literature, The Watch takes place in a grimy apocalyptic punk reality. Characters vaguely match their roles from the books, and story elements are loosely shuffled together, but the show is mostly doing its own thing. For what its worth, I don’t care about breaking away from the source material. The Colour of Magic wound up being a garbage tv adaptation because it faithfully reflected Pratchett’s weakest and most dated novel. In fact so far there has been only one change in The Watch that bothered me, which was the decision to cast the tallest actor they could find to play the role of the dwarf Cheery. This decision undermines the entire joke behind Captain Carrot, whose shtick is that he’s is a huge burly man who thinks he’s a dwarf. Considering how diminutive Corporal Angua’s actor is, I don’t understand why she couldn’t have just been cast as Cheery, instead of the show having to include some confusing handwave explanation that dwarfs come in all sizes.
As to the looks, I’ve seen a lot of adaptations go with post-apocalyptic punk aesthetics. At least half dozen of them are Shakespeare performances. It is always for the same reason: it saves the production a ton of money on costumes and sets, making everything out of garbage. The problem is that all these adaptations look the same. This show presumably had a pitiful budget, and it really shows, looking like every amateur stage production I’ve ever seen.
As to the story, I was just about interested enough to keep watching. There are some sparks of imagination here and there, and some of the show’s interpretations of characters and locales are pretty cool. The show’s biggest weakness though is comedy. Jokes are one of the few things you don’t need a massive budget for, and this show just doesn’t manage to pull off that many funny gags. Some are borrowed from the book and just fall flat on screen. Some are from the book and they’ve simply become too dated to be funny to a 2020 audience. But a lot are original gags that just don’t land very well, either being lame in concept or just badly edited and delivered. This show only manages to be occasionally funny, which is a crying shame as we could do with a strong high fantasy parody these days.
There is potential here, and by a second season, I can imagine the writers and actors getting into their stride. Right now, it feels like The Colour of Magic probably comes across to a new reader; a bit weak, but maybe worth sticking around for more.