His Dark Materials, episode 5 review: Lyra's exhilarating polar-bear ride was the stuff of childhood fantasy
Every child and most young-at-heart adults who read Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights surely fantasised about riding a polar bear. Well, it happened in the fifth episode of handsome adaptation His Dark Materials (BBC One) and looked just as much fun on-screen as it sounded on the page.
Our plucky heroine Lyra Belacqua (Dafne Keen, getting even cooler by the episode) reassured her panserbjørne pal Iorek Byrnison: “I’m not heavy.” “And I’m not a horse,” he replied. “Hold tight. I won’t be gentle.”
She promptly hopped onto his back and hung onto his fur for dear life as he galloped across the tundra, all paws and rippling muscle mass. A thrilling moment which was wonderfully realised by special effects wizards and kickstarted another rollicking instalment of this enjoyably epic adventure.
As the ragtag Gyptians trekked across the frozen North in search of their missing children, the all-knowing alethiometer had sent Lyra and Iorek on a detour to a fishing village in the next valley, where something ghostly was waiting for her. Because this is fiction, rather than running in the opposite direction, she was compelled to investigate.
It turned out to be abandoned and barely alive Billy Costa (Tyler Howitt), who had been cruelly cut from his daemon in an experiment akin to removing his soul. They returned the comatose Billy to his mother Ma Costa (Anne-Marie Duff) but in a poignant scene, she granted her son permission to be reunited with his daemon Ratter and crooned a lullaby as Billy died.
The other major development this week was meeting future co-protagonist Will Parry (Amir Wilson), a sensitive schoolboy in our parallel world. His fate was bound up with Lyra’s, we were told, and “together they will change everything”.
I remain unconvinced by the scenes of Lord Boreal (Ariyon Bakare) sniffing around multiple universes, which, like the character Will Parry, have been brought forward from second book The Subtle Knife – but to no great effect so far. There’s still not quite enough for wisecracking Texan aeronaut Lee Scoresby (Lin-Manuel Miranda) to do either, although at least he bought a welcome dash of laconic cowboy wit to the occasionally po-faced proceedings.
Elsewhere there was an affectingly tender reunion between Farder Coram (James Cosmo) and his former lover, witch Serafina Pekkala (Ruta Gedmintas): 300 years old but looking pretty good on it. “There has never been a moment when I have not thought of you or of him,” said Coram, referring to their own dead son. Seeing Cosmo’s craggy face streaked with tears was enough to set me off too.
Serafina flew in, promised to help the Gyptians in their quest, uttered some gnomic wisdom, then flew off again. Nothing so crass as broomsticks here, of course – she just reclined on the air and floated away.
We were left on the usual cliffhanger when Lyra was snatched by mercenaries and taken to Gobbler research station Bolvangar, which translated as “Fields of Evil'”. Bet they leave that off the tourist information leaflets.
Actress Lia Williams recently played a shady spook in BBC One stablemate The Capture and here she was another icy villainess, “experimental theologian” Dr Cooper – who, Lyra realised with a jolt, was about to sever her from daemon Pantalaimon.
A certain battle-scarred polar bear might have something to say about that. Hold tight. He won’t be gentle.
