The dramatisation of NL sticks very closely to the plot, keeping nearly all scenes. The few it does drop include the fight in chapter seventeen, Pantalaimon’s straining at his and Lyra’s bond in chapter eleven and smaller moments such as the beginning of chapter six when Lyra pauses at the coffee stall. Though few scenes have been cut, however, all are considerably shortened. Obviously this is essential, and works well on the whole. However, the poignancy of some scenes is lost – a case in point is Lyra’s ride on Iorek to find Tony Makarios. Like the first Harry Potter film, the adaptation becomes pure plot, and loses a lot for it. For instance the moment I have just mentioned is symbolic and important to Lyra and Iorek’s relationship and Pantalaimon’s straining in chapter eleven is essential to the drama of Lyra and Pantalaimon’s relationship.

For no discernible reason, drama is much lessened. Lyra’s reactions are downplayed. For instance, hiding in the roof in Bolvangar she does not give herself away by gasping in horror, but sneezing (also this is quite a nice little link up with a moment when she hides in the retiring room and she asks Lord Asriel ‘What if I want to sneeze?’ His reply is ‘Get Pan to smother you.’). Also weakening to the drama is the revelation right at the beginning of the story what a ‘severed child’ is. Worse is Lyra’s reaction to finding out Mrs. Coulter’s involvement with the gobblers. She does not have a reaction.

However, there are some small parts I actually think are a slight improvement on the original text (though I still would not change that). Lyra is less certain that Roger has been taken by the gobblers, making her willing departure with Mrs. Coulter more believable. Also, Kaisa’s ability to follow Lyra to Bolvangar is explained by the cloudpine branch that the consul gave her. In the book the branch never appears again.

Though I do not feel more humour is needed at all in the book, it works well (on the whole) here. There is less time to develop atmosphere and tension, and the dramatisation might have been flat, therefore, without the humour to lift it. It becomes a lot lighter than the book. Some nice moments are these:

Lyra: Will we know when we’re drunk?
Roger: Dunno. Most scholars seem a bit surprised when they try and stand up at the end of dinner.’

Pantalaimon: (about the golden monkey) He goes around all ‘oh, look at me, I’m fantastic’ all the time.

John Faa: (discussing navigation at Trollesund) We’re going north, Farder Coram.
Farder Coram: There’s a lot of ‘north’ in these parts, John.

Lyra: Find some flour. Roger told me it explodes.
Pantalaimon: Here. Does it matter if it’s self-raising?

Lee Scoresby: To err is human
Hester: To err is bear. And hare.

Bear guard: You are my prisoner
Lyra: Okay (in a sort of ‘whatever’ voice)

Bear guard: You must look up and marvel… the carvings show zeppelins flying from all over the world, bearing gifts to the king of the bears, Iofur Raknison.
Lyra: Do they? It’s hard to make out because of the bird poo.

Pantalaimon: (about Iofur Raknison) Flatter him. Tell him he smells nice.

Roger: Do you reckon your father will feed us?
Lyra: We’ve come all this way to give him the alethiometer. He should throw us a party.

Lyra: No! My parents should be pushing each other off the mountain, not kissing!

Some humour, though, really doesn’t work. Lee Scoresby is turned into a comedy character, with obligatory ‘comedy character’ music at his appearance. Cringe-worthy. Iorek is also made into a figure of fun, when the witches pick him up and put him in the balloon.

There are more serious moments added which work well too. When the butler cleans up the spilled Tokay, his daemon laps a little. ‘Later tonight,’ narrates Balathamos, ‘they will wonder why they both have a stomach ache.’ A bit obvious, but still effective, is Pantalaimon’s ignored murmuring that he ‘had a really strange dream’ when he and Lyra slept in the retiring room, where it was ‘snowing’. When he offers to tell it to Lyra, she snaps, ‘Shut up, Pan.’ Another good idea is Pantalaimon’s reaction to Lyra’s life with Mrs. Coulter. Apparently, he has only managed to turn into an array of pampered cats and lapdogs. Something absent from the book, arctic mythology relating to the aurora, has a mention here. Lyra hears about the bridge of byfrost, which souls use to cross over to the afterlife. Farder Coram talks about the aurora having the hammer in one hand, the birch-branch in the other – tools of angelic vengeance, he says. A really nice detail comes when the Master stirs the poison using a 2B pencil, ‘his favourite for marking student papers.’

Well done, too, are the connections with the later books. When the Master poisons the Tokay, the air smells of marzipan. When Tony Costa (or Joey as he is renamed here, presumably to avoid confusion with Tony Makarios) speaks of the wind-suckers, he mentions some people call they spectres. The consul at Trollesund is in love with Ruta Skardi, and she has borne him daughters.

Less successful are the mad proffessorisation of Lord Asriel. A priceless moment is when he shrieks ‘I am MASTER of the aurora!’ The golden monkey’s constant monkey snuffling does not sound like the controlled, elegant golden monkey I know. Lyra’s ‘But, like, shouldn’t it be left up to me to choose what I like.’ is a bit heavy handed, as well as being in valley-speak. Very disappointing is Kaisa’s spell to open the daemon cages is ‘open lock, when I knock.’ To Lyra’s entirely justified ‘Is that it?’ ‘It’s not what you say, says Kaisa,’ It’s the way that you say it.’ Whatever. His Welsh accent is also inexplicable. The nurse has no daemon at all – it appears the children at Bolvangar know exactly what will happen to them. Serefina says at one point, ‘Daemons make us different, not better,’ which I feel misses the point entirely. Pullman’s point is that daemons – souls – are exactly what make us better.

There are names here not taken from the book. The golden monkey (who, I suppose, has to be named for practical purposes) is called Ozymandeus. Presumably after the poem about the statue of a once powerful, now forgotten king. The master’s raven hardly needs naming, and the Butler’s Irish setter certainly does not, but they are named all the same – Leonor and Fidolia respectively. What is more, Balthamos says of Fidolia ‘which the butler has named…’ implying that people name their own daemons.

Not bad on the whole. It has really set me thinking about how I would manage an adaptation.