Going Postal

francie BradyII

Why is no one talking about this new sky adaptation? Hope it's better then the other two!

Zaph

Haven't been watching much tv lately so haven't heard anything about it. When's it on?

offdechain

when its on

ozt9vdujny3srf

Wikipedia wrote:

Terry Pratchett's Going Postal is a two-part television adaptation of the book of the same name by Terry Pratchett, produced by The Mob, to be first broadcast on Sky One, and in High Definition on Sky One HD, on Easter 2010.
It will be the third in a series of adaptations, following Terry Pratchett's Hogfather and Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic. It was announced as part of an investment of at least £10 million into high definition adaptations of novels, including Chris Ryan's Strike Back and Skellig by David Almond.[1] Filming began in May 2009 in Budapest.[2]
As is now traditional with The Mob's Discworld adaptations, several fans were invited to appear as extras, during shooting in Budapest.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett's_Going_Postal


I didn't really enjoy the first 2 but I don't hold up much hope. Will watch it anyway!

Sofiztikated

Hmmm. They better not fudge this up. Wasn't impressed with the HogFather, and never got a chance to see Colour of Magic. (I've seen it in so many places as Color. Grinds my balls.)

Going Postal has the potential to be amazing. Hopefully they don't mash Making Money into it as well, so they can actually develop it and the characters.

francie BradyII

2 hours isn't enough for any Pratchett novel, should be done as a 6 part mini series!

bigdaddyliamo

Now, why did I not recieve a clacks about this???

mawk

gargoyles went on strike with the rest of the public sector.

johnnyskeleton

They really need a strong actor to pay Moist.

The problem that I have with the other ones (apart from the cheap sets, hammy acting and lack of comic timing) is that they portray the discworld as a magical world. Going postal is the ideal opportunity for them to portray it as it TP has made it (i.e. a more brash, corrupt version of London at the cusp of the modern era/industrialisation). Going postal is a good allegory for the lack of business ethics at the higher end and the power of small groups of determined computer hackers. Lets hope it's not just another romp with dwarves(dwarfs?) and wizards.

360ts

This could really turn out good if it's done right. The problem with the Hogfather adaptation was that unless you had already read the books it seemed sort of confusing and the humour was enhanced by previously reading the books. It didn't seem funny to most of my friends that hadn't read Pratchett.

Moist is a character that people could relate to without reading the book. He's a loveable rogue who enjoys ( if I may just get a little 70's here?) "sticking it to the man". The humour in Going Postal should lend itself better to the screen. A lot of the humour could work very well visually, riding the stallion across the plains jumping into a trough of water, the golden suit, etc

If he was played in a similar manner to Downey's Sherlock Holmes perhaps?

johnnyskeleton

Is there any ETA on this yet?

Cheesecake101

I'd also like to know when/if this is being aired?

But the character I'm most worried about the portrayal of is Adora Belle Dearheart. Apart from the fact that she is one of my favourite things in those two books. She has such a potential to either be done fantastically, or awfully. They're going to need an actress who can really hold her own.

Blackhorse Slim

Last I heard it was pencilled in for 30th May, Sky 1 and HD.

Here's a trailer

http://sky1.sky.com/Going-Postal-new-trailer

Cheesecake101

Well it looks.... disappointing, but not as disappointing as I thought it would be. Although immediately revealing who the werewolf is in the Watch is rather out of character, the rest seems at least to be fun.

spender.j

I for one like the look of that! I can understand why some people would think it looks disappointing but it is only because it is not larger-than-life! Terry Pratchett's real talent is stimulating our imaginations, which is completely individual (as anyone who reads the Discworld, The Movie thread would see):)

BlitzKrieg

it looked fine (most of the characters look pretty close to what I imagined)

8except*

Moist is a bit on the wrong side of goofy more like matthew broderwick and less like john cusack. Weird I know but thats how i imagined moist. Someone who has a very strong vision of the world its just not gelling with other people's insanity. Which is sort of how john cusack plays his goofiness. In contrast matthew broderick tends to be more innocent goofiness. Mr Pump despite the bad CG could work, the golems/trolls will aways be the most difficult part of adapting any discworld piece because despite their fantastical design they are meant to be seen as everyday objects/part of the scenery, something which unless you have the money for it is difficult with cgi.

I am happy with how they got Richter, I really felt like kicking Sky for miscasting tim curry in the light fantastic and not having him play richter in this, but it looks like they got someone who will play somewhat close to the source. BUT the banshee looks f*cking awful.

Although immediately revealing who the werewolf is in the Watch is rather out of character, the rest seems at least to be fun.

It kills one of the best moments in making money anyway

Eugh. I saw the ad for this and I think it's going to be absolutely terrible. Why doesn't Sky just stop making crappy made-for-TV movies? It's strange how a terrible novel like Twilight can get made into a Hollywood movie, but a series like Discworld hasn't gotten a look in.

Only big budget movies can match the wonderfulness of Ankh Morpork

The Recliner

As an actor and character I do like the guy who is playing Moist, he was excellent in Coupling years ago

However as pointed out I do think he isn't sauve enough to play Moist, a bit too much of a kooky character

Zaph

Had to check which guy it was. I definitely agree, the guy who played Jeff is woefully miscast as Moist.

pixelburp

I only knew this was happening when I happened to catch a trailer for it whilst flicking over to Sky: needless to say I groaned a little inside. Having just watched the trailer, I groaned a little more, it looks hopeless. I doubt any of the criticism levelled against the previous adaptations have been taken onboard. None of the characters look right & if the Colour of Magic was anything to go by, this story will have the tension and pacing of a wet weekend. The last adaptation was almost painfully directed - scenes that should have been funny, arthritically creaked to the punchline

iUseVi

pixelburp wrote: »

I only knew this was happening when I happened to catch a trailer for it whilst flicking over to Sky: needless to say I groaned a little inside. Having just watched the trailer, I groaned a little more, it looks hopeless. I doubt any of the criticism levelled against the previous adaptations have been taken onboard. None of the characters look right & if the Colour of Magic was anything to go by, this story will have the tension and pacing of a wet weekend. The last adaptation was almost painfully directed - scenes that should have been funny, arthritically creaked to the punchline

I have to agree, doesn't look good at all. Oh I'll watch it, I may even enjoy bits of it; but I'll be sitting there knowing that I could have done a better job with my home camcorder.

Ridley

The Recliner wrote: »

As an actor and character I do like the guy who is playing Moist, he was excellent in Coupling years ago

However as pointed out I do think he isn't sauve enough to play Moist, a bit too much of a kooky character

I'm surprised no-one has called foul on Coyle in his late thirties playing a character in his mid-twenties.

constitutionus

im actually willing to give him a chance. took me ages to realise he was playing the new king in prince of persia and that role was along way from the welsh lad in coupling.

i share the conscerns about the films sky has done so far but TBH im just glad to be getting anything as the world is full of amazing books yet all hollywood is interested in doing is another fecking robin hood film.

i had to suffer decades of crap superhero films before hollywood got em right so anything that raises the profiles of the books may one day result in some REAL money and talent going into one.

till then this'll do.

MarVeL

Any Pratchett is better than none isn't it? I'll be watching and hopefully enjoying. Worst case it'll remind me how good the book was

Nevyn

First part is on tonight 6pm for two hours, looking forward to it.

I enjoyed it - part two is tomorrow evening which is a holiday in the UK.

I'll have to get to and leave work on time tomorrow I guess.

The Recliner

Thought it was Meh! to be honest

Seemed lacking in humour and I really don't think Coyle was right for the part (though I do like him in most things)

I know there are Golems and vampires in it but it could be set almost anywhere and not Discworld, jsut doesn't have the right feel

Hopefully it picks up this evening

Pimp Ninja

I forgot about this and missed it last night.

Is it being repeated ?

dreamers75

Enjoyed that, got a load of little jokes in which i enjoyed.

Dance was perfect as Vetinary.


Better than the previous 2 anyway.

pixelburp

I semi enjoyed it - haven't caught the second part yet though - that's just on tonight, wasn't it? - generally it was a vast improvement on the leaden "Colour of Magic" and actually had some zip about proceedings.

On an (un)related note, although we saw Captain Angua (who was just a bit too vampy tbh), it's interesting how Sky have completely avoided Sam Vimes. I wonder if this is deliberate; he's certainly Discworld's most popular and prominent resident at this stage & has a natural set of stories to adapt, charting his rise & rise. Yes despite that Sky have avoided him like the plague. Probably just as well I suppose.

BlitzKrieg

Vimes is the only character I think you could actual make a running series out of on tv (cause his stories can easily bounce from mundane copper stuff to fantastical ott so a series could be paced like your average doctor who season), no way sky will touch him until they know they can make something out of the wealth of content behind him.

johnnyskeleton

Was the second part any good?

I got the impression that

they had taken out the sorting machine completely which kinda takes away one of the main points of the plot

Overall, a lot of the scenes in the first one seemed to deliberately sidestep the jokes. For example

instead of the horse bolting out of ankh morepork and moist having to jump off it in sto lat, spike tames it and they enjoy a casual ride in the countryside; or the bit where he pulls out the expensive pin for stanley was a real damp squib.

Also, a lot of the bits where moist showed charm in the book were completely destroyed by a watered down version (for TP, acting should err on the side of zany) and the character development was off

moist promotes groat almost straight away, thus avoiding the whole build up

I'm probably biased because going postal was my favourite of the modern books (with nightwatch a close second). Compared to the Light Fantastic and Hogfather I thought the production values were much better, and I also accept that going postal is much more understandable to a person who hasn't read the books (too much in the other movies would go way over your head if you weren't familiar with it). But it still has the same malaise where there is no energy to it. Pity, although it has inspired me to re-read the book.

The Recliner

I thought it sucked alright

I am guessing they worked off feedback from non Discworld readers and tried to make it more accessable, unfortuantely that took away all the charm and humour of the thing

I really felt it lacked anything that would have made it a discworld story

I am really disappointed in it because for all their faults both Hogfather and The Colour of Magic were still clearly Discworld stories, there was jsut no sense of that here

In saying that though I did like Mr Pump

Nevyn

Utterly lacklustre.
Says a lot when the only thing which got both my kids excited was Terry's cameo.

Blackhorse Slim

I thought it was good, maybe not as "fantasy" as the others but still Discworld. I guess that's down to their choice of book to adapt, and Going Postal is more conventional than some of the others. It was a bit slow to get going, and the buring down of the Post Office was fairly anti-climactic, but other than that no too many complaints.

I liked Claire Foy as Adora - I wasn't sure at first, but she played it well. Similar to the way Michelle Dockery stole the show as Susan in the Hogfather. Coyle as Moist was ok, Charles Dance was good as Vetinari but not as OTT (or as good) as Jeremy Irons in Colour of Magic. The golems looked a little silly and out of place, but not too bad. The rest of the cast were very good, Andrew Sachs in particular.

Looking forward to the next one - let's hope it's a Watch one. :cool:

paperclip2

Thaedydal wrote: »

Utterly lacklustre.
Says a lot when the only thing which got both my kids excited was Terry's cameo.

Me and my daughter both shouted 'Its Terry!!' at the same moment, which was probably the most lively we got through the whole thing.
A bit of an 'embuggerance' all round although better than the other two.

Cactus Colm

Completely enjoyed it, much more than the previous two. Was never a big fan of Wincewind, and while I enjoyed "Going Postal" the book, it wouldn't have been among my favourites. But I can see why it was adapted more than any of the others, seeming much friendlier than others to adaptation.

The changes and parts that were left out, don't really bother me, as I read the book when it was released, and haven't since, so I've forgotten a lot of it.

The cast were fine, although Andrew Sachs kept reminding me of David Kelley. Claire Foy is lovely!

angelll

I really liked it. Thought it was funny and loved the scenery etc. Very few books will translate onto screen well but i thought it was well done.

BlitzKrieg

Only 10 minutes in and I hate moist completely wrong in every way

BlitzKrieg

Oh gods I am only at the end of the first part and they butchered it all again the worse being moist and richter are ruined and the whole moral plotline is cringeworthy tosh peaking in **** when there's the smoking is bad bit

The Recliner

I think Blitzkrieg must have lost the will to live as he hasn't been back to report on the second part

MarVeL

Thought it was alright myself. Not a patch on the book but as a separate entity it was watchable. Herself (definitely not a Pratchett fan despite my many urgings) watched it and thought it was ok as well.

Odd lack of humour in it though

iUseVi

I take back my negative comments; I really liked it. Dearheart and Lipwig were both really well played.

EDIT: yeah it took some liberties as far as plot is concerned but if you consider it a separate entity from the book it was really enjoyable

BlitzKrieg

I havnt had a chance to watch part 2

but part 1 was painful, badly made, poorly adapted and cringeworthy of the highest order.

It needs to be taken as a seperate identity from the book because it has kept very little of the book's plot. I can understand and expect in an adaptation most of the subplots would be cut (so the old postmen, the smoking gnu and the post office carriage service I am not surprised were missing [though the carriage men could show up in part 2, doubt it])

But they replaced it with an utter tosh rewrite of the main plot cutting out the mystical and humour elements and replacing it with this god awful melodramatic life lesson bollocks that reached the height of idiocy when they

showed the whole playout of Adora bellheart choosing cigerettes over chocolate and blaming it all on moist

it is idiotic, heavy handed and uninteresting.

But compared to the butchering they have done richter at least bellheart has kept her backstory somewhat intact (even if her independent working woman role in the book has been turned into a handicap rather then the charm it had in the book.) Richter has been gutted of all his looking glass charm of the book (he's just like moist...but better) and now is some pompus overfed banker. Absolute waste of a character, in fact he plays more like cosmo lavish form making money then richter. They must have got the books mixed up here?

Moist is completely wrong, I was worried he'd land on the mathew broderick side of weird uncomfortable humour but he's not funny...not at all, nor is he charming, clever or manipulative, this is a character who is meant to be always looking for an angle and despite saying *I am looking for the angles* in a bored voice over at one point he never seems to be playing anyone or anything, just bloundering through shouting at people and dancing around like a muppet. I mean I actually had to ask *why did he go to the pin shop?* it made perfect sense in the book he was keeping stanley on his side over groat, but it didnt make sense in this except for the plot conveniance later on. What happened to him charming all the gaurds in his cell before being hanged? What happened to him trying out the stamp in public? These were the scenes that defined Moist and they were cut.


Ahhh!

On top of that, Ankh Morpock seems to look worse and worse with every one of these shows, its lifeless, empty and worse of all CLEAN it never stops looking like a set, the extras always seem to be the same six people and the background noise is completely missing.


I will find it very difficult to convince myself to watch part 2.

angelll

I thought adora chose cigarettes when she was stressed over her father dying. Didn't she go into the boarded up shop after?

iUseVi

Interesting take Blitz, but you haven't changed my mind I still think it's the best adaptation yet. They have ALL been off plot but the main stuff was there. Oh and some of that stuff you mention IS in part 2,

smoking gnu, the old men, the carriage, oh all of it!

.

Some of the characters like for example Sergeant Angua and the golems are completely NOT what I imagine in my mind's eye when I read the books, they couldn't be more different. And yes, at first the differences pissed me off but it's a fun little TV show and many of the characters do work and I quite enjoyed it.

Anyone else prefer Charles Dance over Jeremy Irons?

The problem is Ankh-Mopork is in our imaginations, if I made a TV show with my perfect Ankh-Mopork most people would think it was crap tbh. Just like some LOTR fanboys/girls think Peter Jackson is a ****ing muppet, it's never going to please everyone. But better than the usual x-factor rubbish or something so don't complain too much or they'll stop making them!

pixelburp

The tiny cameo that annoyed me most was the appearance of Sacarissa Crisplock & Otto Chriek. Otto looked like a bad halloween costume (and the actor looked bored standing in the background doing nothing), they could have dropped him altogether. And as much as I love Tamsin Greig, she was totally unsuitable for the role of Crisplock.

Yeah Dance was much better as Vetinari, but going against the list of rubbish cameos, Angua was just far too ... "Underworld"'y

BlitzKrieg

The problem is Ankh-Mopork is in our imaginations, if I made a TV show with my perfect Ankh-Mopork most people would think it was crap tbh. Just like some LOTR fanboys/girls think Peter Jackson is a ****ing muppet, it's never going to please everyone.

This is not a *oh I imagined it as this* scenario...They've done morpork twice before and both times they did it better then they did it here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmVt0Dlw5yw

and here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCX9K0Jk6ME

compared to this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK41veVCxhU

Its not just that its empty, noticeable bare in almost every shop...its clean, its badly laid out, flat and uninteresting. Its bad set design not wishy washy not what i wanted bollox.

But better than the usual x-factor rubbish or something so don't complain too much or they'll stop making them!

I rather leave tv to the x factor rubbish and keep my attention on media that does the material justice then have half arsed crap for the sake of having it.

but you haven't changed my mind I still think it's the best adaptation yet. They have ALL been off plot but the main stuff was there. Oh and some of that stuff you mention IS in part 2

I had no intention of changing anyone's mind. And I already said I have no issue with them having to cut things to fit a book into a 4 hour mini series.

Where I complained was with the main plots gutting and rebuilding into some moral teaching ****e and the butchering of the lead characters.

angell wrote:

I thought adora chose cigarettes when she was stressed over her father dying. Didn't she go into the boarded up shop after?

She does,

but the whole thing is blamed on moist and is delivered in this awful revealation of your crimes act with the old film footage showing the consequences of moist's actions. And this is the last one you see...After someone commits suicide, after someone is fired, after someone has their life's work taken from them...we get someone starts smoking. And then moist gives out a big yell of *Noooooo!* after this reveal. I'm sorry but on the scale of awful consequences to your actions...smoking comes out on the bottom and suicide tends to be at the top, not the other way around.

Anyone else prefer Charles Dance over Jeremy Irons?

He was fine, but he didnt have nearly as much good material to work with as Irons had in colour of magic. In COM jeremy irons had alot more space to play with his few scenes which is very much like the vetinari to play with his *victims* while Charles Dance tended to be required to deliver plot elements more concretely so couldnt play around as much. Which is a shame because the moist/vetinari scene at the beginning really is something that should be played out a good bit.

comparisons again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwOowHV88wQ

sadly charles dance's scenes are not online yet

I was more annoyed at how drumknot was presented more so. Steve Pemberton was being a smug little git and playing it far too much like how timothy spall played beadle in sweeney todd. Which is pretty much the opposite to how the character was written.

The Recliner

Blitzkrieg pretty much sums up mu feelings towards it much more elequantly than I could

Oddly enough I was one of the few who liked the other two adaptations but there was just far too much wrong with this one for me

r3nu4l

Okay I haven't seen this one but a couple of things strike me.

(BTW, I've read every Pratchett novel and a lot of the 'about Discworld' books.)

I seem to be one of the few who enjoyed the Hogfather adaptation :P So for those of you complaining about this and the other adaptarions I would say you should consider the following:

It's a made-for-TV movie, the budget is not that high. Okay, they're not astoundingly brillliant but at least someone is making the effort to make them!! Hollywood has thus far ignored Pratchett.

The story's aren't faithful to the book? Why complain? How many Hollywood films are faithful to the book? Anyone ever read The Bourne Identity and then watch the film? Even the Lord of the Rings didn't stay faithful to the books and that's a class trilogy!

My wife hasn't read any Discworld novels but loves the Hogfather adaptation, it got her more interested in Pratchett than she has ever been. I would imagine that there have been a lot more converts to the Church of Terry since these adaptations started rolling out

I agree that there's lots of room for improvement but as I say, I think that it's only a matter of time before some Hollywood studio realises that there's money to be made from Pratchett films and really give us a good movie.

I do however agree that there needs to be more effort in bringing Ankh-Morpork to life in these made-for-TV pieces