Terry Pratchett's The Watch: Discworld series coming 2020

I vaguely remember hearing something about this, great to see it's coming 2020 - The Watch series of books and characters are amongst my favourite parts of Discworld, and most of the casting is pretty much spot on according to how I saw the characters

The Watch: Discworld Series Cast, Photos and Details for BBC America Adaptation

 

thanks for the heads up. Huge Discworld fan and all the previous adaptations based on the books have been sadly lacking IMO, getting no where near the magic between the pages.
It does look like the series will rather loosely follow the books rather than a true adaptation. The trouble with filming books like the Discworld series is that we've all built up in our imagination how the characters look so there's usually inevitable disappointment when the screened image doesn't match.

Fingers crossed that it's a worth while watch which ever path it follows.

 

I agree that none of the films have really captured the magic of the books. Going Postal came the closest.

 

Aye, also agree that none of the films has really worked, although like you Going Postal has been my favourite one so far

 

Carrot looks great IMO

 

Tried watching it. Gave up when it seemed it was ‘inspired by’ and bore little relation to the books. Sure, some stuff gets changed in transition from page to screen, but this was dire.

 

That is such a shame, because the actual stories themselves would work wonderfully.

The best we can hope for is that someone like Amazon or Netflix will wind up doing a series of movies, and do them as written. Come on, Sir Terry was one of the most beloved and most popular writers in the English language! Someone who actually loves the books needs to take this on. Peter Jackson could do a wonderful job with them.

 

I'd not heard of this one. When I saw the picture above I thought something was off, and sure enough it seems this is a cyberpunked up inspired by version of the city watch, even Terrys daughter is critical. His early stuff was fabulous and great fun to read in my youth, but the later ones somewhat formulaic but its hard to be too critical given his declining health. I've not seen anything on screen that really does any of his books justice, Good Omens was probably the best stab at it.

 

I've read all of his books, and the only later ones that I'd advise against are Unseen Academicals, where the wizards of Unseen University, for no comprehensible reason, suddenly become obsessed with sports.

One later series that I absolutely would urge you to read are the Tiffany Aching books -
The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, I Shall Wear Midnight
and The Shepherd's Crown. The last is a little difficult because it was completed just before he died, and obviously was nowhere near done to his normal standard, but I Shall Wear Midnight is my favorite of his books, and contains passages that are as good as anything he's ever written.

Honestly, only Good Omens really got a major film studio quality productions. Everything else got, at best, "TV movie" production and budgets.

 

I never did read Unseen Academicals, I think I got up to around about there in the sequence. I used to be a first day buyer and had a shelf full of hardbacks from mid 90's onward probably, it struck me though some of them got to be a case of pick a modern subject and make a book of what if disc world had a post office or central bank or telegraph etc - I have Raising Steam somewhere that I've never read perhaps I should have a go. I did read some of the Tiffany ones - the first two you mention I think, quite good from what I recall.

I did also enjoy The Long Earth, with Stephen Baxter I think, there are others in this series also.

Just had a look at his web site, it has a quote generator which I think I may use a lot here's a good one:

'The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.'

 

Tiffany Aching ended up being one of my favourite characters, along with Nanny Ogg, Death and The Librarian

 

Her advice to the abusive father Mr Petty in I Shall Wear Midnight is one of my all-time favorite passages in his work:

"I am your only chance, Mr. Petty," she said. "Run away. Grab what you can and run away right now. Run away to where they've never heard of you, and then run a bit farther, just to be on the safe side, because I will not be able to stop them, do you understand? Personally, I could not care less what happens to your miserable frame, but I do not wish to see good people get turned into bad people by doing a murder, so you just leg it across the fields and I won't remember which way you went."

"You can't turn me out of my own house," he mumbled, finding some drunken defiance.

"You've lost your house, your wife, your daughter... and your grandson, Mr. Petty. You will find no friends here this night. I am just offering you your life."

"It was the drink what done it!" Petty burst out. "It was done in drink, miss!"

"But you drank the drink, and then you drank another drink, and another drink," she said. "You drank the drink all day at the fair, and you only came back because the drink wanted to go to bed." Tiffany could feel only coldness in her heart.

"I'm sorry."

"Not good enough, Mr. Petty, not good enough at all. Go away and become a better person and then, maybe, when you come back as a changed man, people here might find it in their hearts to say hello to you, or at least to nod."​

That, and her technique for taking the pain away from the old Baron.