The Watch

They somehow took one of the funniest series of books and handed it to a writer and director who don't have a sense of humour. The tone is off. The cast try their best but the pacing and tone are nothing like Pratchett and nothing like his books. So we're left with a series which is an object of interest to fans of Pratchett and fans of comedy sci-fi, but in the end it is a misfire. It fails to even be fun, coherent storytelling.

One of the things I keep hearing about this show is that it is not a direct interpretation of Sir Terry's phenomenal discworld, but it is inspired by it. I don't buy it. I think someone somewhere decided that they would cash in on one of Pratchett's most fleshed out segments of the novels, the city watch, in name and name alone, and totally missed the mark. I didn't expect it to be a love letter to Pratchett or fan service, but I did expect the characters to still at least have the same core that made them such treasures to read. Sam Vines is not Sam Vimes, it's true..."That's not my cow." At least not after the first episode. Same goes for each and every character from Angua to Detritus to Carrot to good old Dog botherer. I don't even care about the gender swap. Just give me the impression that there's a Machiavellian mind that's twelve steps ahead of everyone else working its magic behind the scenes, and I'll be happy. But here is where it really stings. You can tell that everyone really is trying. The performances for the most part are committed, albeit misinformed, the production value is decent, aside from Detritus's distracting appearance. And the punk vibe could have actually made for an interesting twist, but it just comes off as forced and therefore, pointless and shallow. I can only hope it gets better.

I had no idea what I was watching and I'm a huge fan of the books. From the very first second it was confusing and horrible. All the characters were botched, storyline botched, script botched, editing botched. I liked the idea that Ankh Morpork was some sort of neo-punk medieval city, but that's all I liked because from the very first second, I was confused about what was happening (and this is from someone who has actually read the books several times).

This is a hard pass for any Pratchett fans as this will only make you angry. And I'm afraid that anyone else will have absolutely no clue what the hell is happening.

Nothing of this show is remotely true to the original work of Terry Pratchett. Well, maybe Carrot's hair colour, but even his character gets a bad treatment of getting a changed background and impact.

It is really sad to see what happened to this. Its like the creators only read the summaries, usually find at the back of the books, and mangled them into a story. Nothing fits to the true work, as characters appearing later in the watch series are not only present at the start, but with their character arcs completed.

It also is not funny, or humorous, or insightful, or sarcatic, or ironic, or satire. Its just bland, bad and poor. Every Terry Pratchett fan should save themself from exposure to this and stay as far away from it as possiple.

PS You may think about comments about race- and genderchanging of characters. Yes. That happens. It does neither add nor detract on how awful the show is. Dont even think about "wokeness" when the base concept is just disgusting. Even the acting is sub-par, but the worst is just the writing.

Watched the pilot, and left conflicted. I've read all the books over the years, so it was nice to see elements brought to life, but why modernise and change things up, when playing it true to the source would have been easier and better? Pratchett isn't a show-writer from the grave, so let his work do the storytelling. It's what he did best, after all