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Did any of my UK readers see the recent TV adaptation of 'The Ruby in the Smoke'? I like Pullman's earlier young adult novels (though not as much as I like 'His Dark Materials'), and I'd becurious to kow whether they did a good job.

Current Mood: curious

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From:

zoefruitcake.livejournal.com

I love those books more than the others. I've got it on video, but not watched it yet. I'll report back when I have

From:

silme.livejournal.com

I liked it pretty well. Although I'm a fan of Billie Piper as Rose on Dr Who , I'm honestly not entirely sure she was cast correctly as Sally. Julie Walters had far too much fun in her role and seemed to go a little over the top at times.

But I still enjoyed it, and it helps me sell the books to my students. (There's a new edition with Billie Piper as Sally on the cover. :) Surprisingly, I'm not seeing anything about a DVD release, oddly enough.

From the Guardian:
There was more artistic royalty in The Ruby in the Smoke (BBC1), a blistering adaptation of a Philip Pullman novel. More a good old-fashioned adventure yarn than the magical mystery tour of Pullman's later His Dark Materials, it had everything you could possibly want from a telly drama - a giant ruby, a beautiful orphan, an evil old hag, children buried in the garden, maharajas, tribes of triads in the south China sea, seedy London dockland, stabbings, lashings, and lashings of opium.

The royalty came in the form of Julie Walters and Billie Piper, currently Queen and Princess of the British screen. I'm a big fan of both, would happily spend the rest of my life with either, but I'm not convinced they were in the right roles. Walters played the evil, mean old Mrs Holland. But I didn't believe her meanness; her over- enthusiastic eyebrows were more comic than scary, there was no disguising that twinkle in the eye. Julie Walters is simply too warm to be cold.

And it was the same with Billie Piper. She was the orphan Sally Lockhart - detached, a little icy too, totally independent and unfazed. There was no opportunity for her to show that enormous smile, her cheekiness or humour . . . Yes, I know, I've just got to get over the fact that Rose Tyler no longer exists.