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Lyra (Keen) consults with her daemonTwelve iS a TOuGh aGe. hOw’S a Kid
supposed to focus on school when it’s
only a matter of time before her life-
long anthropomorphic animal com-
panion stops shape-shifting and settles
into its permanent form—which could
be a lion or a bird or, how mortifying, a
cockroach? Caught between childhood
and the inscrutable world of adults, a
girl might need a female mentor to, say,
teach her how to use a contraband device
called an alethiometer that works kind of
like an omniscient, cosmic Google.
O.K., so maybe those aren’t common
preteen experiences in our reality. But in
the alternate universe of His Dark Mate-
rials, a TV adaptation of Philip Pullman’s
beloved fantasy trilogy, talking -animal
sidekicks known as daemons are the
norm. And 12-year-old hero Lyra (Dafne
Keen)—a scrappy orphan growing up
in the halls of Oxford as her explorer
uncle (James McAvoy) travels north in
search of parallel realms—really could
use a woman in her life. It’s just a shame
that the one who finally spirits her away
is Mrs. Coulter (Ruth Wilson, playing it
coy), a mysterious visitor who chooses
Lyra as a protégé.
In less rarefied corners of this
slantwise Britain, where planes andREVIEW
Coming of age in an alternate realitycomputers don’t exist but airships and
apparently mass-produced clothing do,
children are being kidnapped. A society
of canal-dwelling nomads, the Gyptians,
have been hit hardest. And the state’s
theocratic overlords don’t seem to care.
With Lyra’s buddy Roger (Lewin Lloyd)
missing and the help of a warrior polar
bear, a somewhat miscast Lin-Manuel
Miranda and an alethiometer that only
she can read, a rescue quest takes shape.
It’s a wonderful story, rendered
with the liveliness—and the budget—
Pullman’s books deserve. Keen’s Lyra has
tomboy charm for miles, and her frustra-
tion that everyone seems to know more
than she does about who she is captures
a feeling that, in more abstract form,
is universal to her age. Yet the show’s
world-building can be messy, as early ep-
isodes struggle to establish the conven-
tions of this reality. Coulter’s Art Deco
apartment, a Harry Potter–ish Oxford
and an arctic outpost straight out of the
19th century Yukon don’t add up to a
coherent aesthetic. His Dark Materials
doesn’t transcend its genre—but if you
love fantasy, it’ll cast a spell. —J.b.HIS DARK MATERIALS premieres Nov. 4
on HBOREVIEW
Live at the
Apollo
When Barack Obama spoke
at the Apollo Theater in 2012,
he opened by singing a few
bars of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay
Together.” It was a gesture
of deference from America’s
first black President to a living
monument to African-American
art—an acknowledgment that
when you take the stage at the
Apollo, no matter who you are,
you’d better put on a show.
The clip makes a lovely
denouement to The Apollo, a
long-overdue documentary
on the 85-year-old Harlem
landmark. In tracing a history
that mirrors the struggles and
triumphs of black life through
the decades, director Roger
Ross Williams (Life, Animated)
demonstrates the venue’s
singular impact on icons from
Billie Holiday to James Brown
to Lauryn Hill. Luminaries like
Patti LaBelle offer gossip from
backstage. Amateur Night gets
its due; in one amusing scene,
Williams observes a staffer
warning novice performers that
they might get booed. Most
fascinating are glimpses—too
rare though they are—behind
the curtain of the now-nonprofit
theater in the present, as a
board that refuses to let the
Apollo become a dusty museum
works to keep fostering the
future of black art. —J.B.
THE APOLLO airs Nov. 6 on HBO