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[Kilroy the Grand]

It’s been known that a Discworld television show based in the fictional city of Ankh-Morpork and the cast of characters it is associated with has been in various stages of preproduction discussion for more than a year now. In fact, there’s even video evidence of Sir Terry Pratchett talking with writers about coppers starting up an inter-species band, the trickiness of humane prisoner treatment, and what it might be like to have the undead coming in to file reports on their own murders.

But last weekend the annual Discworld convention was held in Birmingham, England, and it promised a panel hosted by the team behind BBC Worldwide’s fabled Discworld project, and an announcement.

Diane Duane, author (of such close-to-my-childhood books as So You Want To Be A Wizard) and attendee had this to say about the panel’s contents:

    The new Discworld series “The Watch” (AKA CSI:Ankh-Morpork) has been approved by Terry Pratchett and will go into production with BBC Worldwide.

Pratchett’s Discworld series, for those unacquainted, is a rambling and wide ranging collection of books that craft an expertly put together universe of fantasy tropes embodied in nuanced characters, wicked puns, and more political, racial, gender and culture allegory than you can shake quite a large stick at. He’s given us characters like Granny Weatherwax, Susan D’eath Sto Helit, and the three most central female characters of the Ankh-Morpork Watch books: Angua von Überwald (a werewolf of considerable pedigree, pictured above), Cheery Littlebottom, and Sybil Ramkin, all formidable women in their own right.

Probably the most unique to television, however, would be Cheery, a young dwarf on the forefront of the modern dwarvish gender revolution. See, on the Discworld (like in Middle Earth) male and female dwarves are indistinguishable from each other, right down to the beards. Most of dwarvish courtship is actually spent making sure your intended is, in fact, the desired gender through close observation of their habits. Of course, dwarven culture doesn’t encourage androgyny… it encourages everybody to appear as male. Cheery, on the other hand, is a member of a younger generation of dwarven women who really prefer drinks with tiny umbrellas over mead, wouldn’t mind a little lipstick or some steel-toed high-heels, and wear their leather skirted armor a little too short for their elders’ tastes, and would rather not be bothered about it.

So color me excited for this new adaptation. Especially judging by this year-old peek into the writers room. Seems like this adaptation is off to the right start. Now if they could just cast my dream Sam Vimes, Hugh Laurie, I’ll be over the moon.

Come on! House is over, he’s got to do something!

http://www.themarysue.com/discworld-watch-show-in-production/

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Frumple]

Not sure what to think. Brain not computing. If not awesome, perhaps murder is appropriate response? At least some maiming. Maybe a just a little.

Gods alive, I can't help but boggle at the sheer level of "Don't Fuck This Up" this endeavor involves.

[Hubris Incalculable]

Oh. My. God. Yes.

This must happen. It will happen. It will be awesome.

Also, I agree with the writer of the article -- Hugh Laurie as Vimes would be perfect.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

i came

[MonkeyHead]

Hopefully the BBC will pull this off well, unlike Sky who balled up thier efforts badly. The Watchmen (Vimes in particular) is my fave story arc.

[Digital Hellhound]

Woah.

And hey now, I liked the Hog Father TV adaptation. I think. I can't remember much of it.

[Cthulhu]

I'm just hoping this doesn't end up with a gaggle of shrieking 16-20 year old girls screaming in my ears constantly.

[Frumple]

Ahahaha, yeah, if they actually did manage to nab the house dude for vimes, or just something equivalent... ye' gods alive. Discworld buried in poorly written slash fanfiction. It would be a thing of terrible majesty.

Though I now have a rather morbid curiosity as to what the main ship would be. Not sure if I want to attempt conjecture. Or see conjecture attempted. Also studiously avoiding mention of conjunctu-- ah, wait. Crap. Too late.

[Skyrunner]

Not sure what to think. Brain not computing. If not awesome, perhaps murder is appropriate response? At least some maiming. Maybe a just a little.

Gods alive, I can't help but boggle at the sheer level of "Don't Fuck This Up" this endeavor involves.

[Scoops Novel]

This is wonderful, beautiful news, do it right, please. If there was ever a series of books that needed to be recognized and known to the public, properly, it's this one.

Frumple, glorious would evaporate brewing the scumble.

[forsaken1111]

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[Scoops Novel]

Staying precisely to the books.

[scriver]

I've always wanted to read the Discworld books in English, especially Watchmen-arc ones since they always seemed like the better ones, but since I've pretty much lost the ability to concentrate on large texts I've mostly given up on that prospective... A well handled tele adaptation is probably the closest I'll ever come to experiencing them, so I would look forward to that. Of course, like Frumples and Skyrunner, I am very not at all certain they would manage to do it well. I can't really think of an adaptation of humour into another media that has worked well, actually, it suffers a lot more than drama or action in the transference. Different media calls for different kinds of gags and all that. I mean, an hour of text-based puns would be a horrible experience.

[mainiac]

A friend of mine in college had a few discworld movies and I wasn't too impressed.  Decent production values but fire that damn director, no pacing of any kind be it comedic or action-y.  In particular I feel like the movies didn't convey the central plot arc at all.  The point of the color of magic is that Rincewind does not want to be here, he is shoved kicking and screaming into the role of the hero,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

literally because the gods are playing games with him.

If this watch thing is going to not suck then they need to figure out what the arc is going to be right off the bat.  I think that's a bit tricky because most of the arc for the watch novels is Terry Pratchett having fun writing about cops.  That's good in novels, I like watching Terry Pratchett play around with shoving his characters into a different genre of the week.  But I doubt that's something they want to do for TV.  So what is going to be the essential story of this show?

[Liber celi]

I am cautiously optimistic.
The CSI seri...es...es are the worst kind of crime thriller though, in my humble opinion. They don't even have that so-bad-it's-almost-good flair so many other american CROIME series have.

Though I now have a rather morbid curiosity as to what the main ship would be. Not sure if I want to attempt conjecture. Or see conjecture attempted. Also studiously avoiding mention of conjunctu-- ah, wait. Crap. Too late.

We are walking a slick precipice here, but my terrible internet experiences lead me to assume

Spoiler: don't click (click to show/hide)

Vimes/Vetinari

for the first place, closely followed by

Spoiler: why did you click it?? (click to show/hide)

Vimes/Carrot

and on place three:

Spoiler: walk away as long as you still can... (click to show/hide)

Vetinari/Vetinari's secretary(what's his name again?)

No women allowed.
Also, everybody with Wilkins.