Make way for The Watch! The upcoming BBC America series, which is inspired by Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, reimagines Captain Sam Vimes and his motley crew of Watch officers as they struggle to survive on the crime-ridden streets of Ankh-Morpork. However, when a ghost of Vimes' past reemerges in his life, they may find themselves becoming something much more than a few misfits brought together by happenstance -- if the dragon doesn't get them first, that is.
Speaking to CBR, series creator Simon Allen and stars Richard Dormer (Vimes), Jo Eaton-Kent (Cheery), Adam Hugill (Carrot) and Marama Corlett (Angua) offered a glimpse of what's to come on the TV series. They explained why the series isn't a strict adaptation of the novels and shared their experiences with Pratchett's novels prior to (and during) their work on The Watch. They also discussed how they relate to their characters, what they hope viewers take away from the series and more.
CBR: What is one thing you want viewers to know about The Watch before they sit down to watch it for the first time?
Simon Allen: That it's fun, and that it's a show that surprises you, and maybe it will even shock you the further into you go, and that it's a wild ride. I mean, it was originally pitched as a kind of a procedural, and it has procedural beats in it, but I think it uses that as a kind of stepping off point to do really wild things. We don't want to spoil anything! I got into trouble yesterday because I spoke loads and I got told off, but there are so many WTF swerves in this, all the way through, and so many revelations and shocking twists and turns. I think that's partly because of the absurdity and madness of the world that it's set in, that it can just kind of go anywhere and do anything -- and believe me, it does! [laugh] So that would be my thing. I don't know about the other guys.
Jo Eaton-Kent: Yeah! Like genuinely, you will never know which way it's going. That's what I find, is that even reading the scripts, it was very much a case of, "Oh, I wonder how this is going to go!" And before you know it, bam! There's a side hit. Suddenly, a train comes out of nowhere. There's not any specific train I'm talking about.
Allen: There's no train, Jo!
Eaton-Kent: No train! [laughs]
Allen: We were watching the climax of the series, because we shot that in London after the COVID shutdown, and these guys were doing something that I don't think any show has ever done before. I was kind of standing there, crying, because they did it so beautifully and they're exceptional. It really is an incredible sequence. But at the same time, I was thinking, "I cannot believe they let us do this!" [laughs] I think the show is just full of things that I just can't believe that we got to do them, because they're so outrageous. So yeah, I think you're in for a lot of surprises, a lot of thrills, a lot of fun.
As with any adaptation, the show makes some changes to the source material. Can you tell me a little about the process of bringing these characters from page to screen?
Allen: When I came on to work on the show, it had already been in development. All versions of it had been in development for many, many years. I was asked to come at it from quite a left field angle and see if I could create something that would get networks excited about these amazing books, which we all adore, but also appeal to people that maybe don't know the books.
So the kind of things I latched onto -- which the thing about Terry Pratchett that's amazing -- is that he's present in his own books as a narrator and a commentator. Most of what's amazing about the books is because he's there with you as he's telling you the story, and he manipulates the medium of literature so brilliantly and so subversively and so uniquely, but a lot of what's in there are literary conceits. A lot of the things that work work because of his voice, and we didn't have him and we're also in a different genre: we're in television.
So what the show was trying to do initially was think of the television equivalent of those literary conceits. So we use things like subtitles where he might use footnotes, or we use music in a particularly self-conscious and self-aware way. So that's self-awareness is all the way through the show, and I think it probably gets more self-aware as it goes along.
Then there was the fact that the first Watch book is just this exceptional comedy, unlike anything you've ever read before. It's amazing. One of the later watch books, Nightwatch, is a very dark psychological thriller. It felt like you wanted both of those flavors in this, because if you just did one, you'd be losing all the goodies that Pratchett went on to develop later on. So it's kind of like a remix. It's kind of like a sample mix, if you like.
Then of course, there's the fact there's a great line in Nightwatch, which is, "Nowhere in the multiverse does Sam Vimes as he is now murder Sybil Ramkin," and the word multiverse is used multiple times in Pratchett's books, as you know, so we thought, "Okay, we're J.J. Abrams with the Kelvin-verse. We're going to cite this in a kind of a backwater of the Discworld multiverse," and the books there -- like Raymond Chandler once said of the Hollywood adaptations of his books -- the books are just fine. They're on the shelf. They're eternal. They'll never be touched. They will be spoiled. But this is its own thing and was always going to be from the start, and I hope people go with it. As I said to you before, I think it's a lot of fun and I think it will take you into some wild places.
Discworld is, as we have discussed, based on a beloved book series. What was your familiarity with novels before you signed onto this project, and how has working on the series impacted your view of them?
Eaton-Kent: My dad actually was involved with a theatrical production of his Truckers books, his books about the Truckers and the Diggers -- Pratchett's books. That's a different world to this world. So I've had it in my family, because my dad's a theatrical director. I've had it in my blood for quite some time, really, since I was a wee bairn. So that's my familiarity with it, and then I've gone along to read them after this, knowing it's in me blood.
Allen: I had a copy of Mort when I was 12, and it was my favorite book. I loved it, and I still think it's one of his best books. It's amazing. I think they're gonna try and make a movie of it one day. It's brilliant. And of course, Death looms quite large as a character in that... Death is a massive part of our show, and we had to have that character in there.
Richard Dormer: I actually started reading the books at about 12 as well -- 12 or 13. The Light Fantastic, Colour of Magic, that was the first two. I read them all, every single one, up to Guards, Guards!, and then I brought Guards, Guards! when I got into drama school in London RADA [Royal Academy of Dramatic Art]. I remember, my first day, I give it to this friend -- it was one of the other students -- so I never got to read about Sam Vimes. It's almost like I got the whole way through, like 10 books or something, and it's ironic that I never got to read Sam Vimes until nearly 30 years later! That's pretty weird. And here I am, playing him.
Adam Hugill: I mean, I wasn't brought up with Terry Pratchett. Obviously, I knew his name growing up, but I was sort of brought up by my dad on The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and that side of fantasy. I got the part in the show very early on; I got it on my birthday, and that same day, my dad went out to buy me -- he went into a secondhand shop and he ran away, very much like that, and found one of the Terry Pratchett books in this secondhand library in the north of England, and he brought it back and I started reading it. It was the Nightwatch, actually! I've got it with me, next to me right now.
I started reading it, and I think I told Simon this when I first met him, that when I read Terry's book after having read some of the scripts for the show, they were the exact same to me -- the tone, the way Terry writes, was exactly there. The TV series could have been written by Terry and Simon could have written Terry's books, in my eyes. It was just the tone was completely perfect. The humor, the madness, the sarcasm -- it was all there. I think, if the audience really takes a leap of faith into this world that has been created on screen and into our multiverse of Terry's world, they'll just find Terry's absolute signature sarcasm and joy and madness within our story as well, to me.
Marama Corlett: I hadn't read Pratchett's work before I became involved, and for me, it was fairly quick, the transition from getting the job and flying out to Cape Town to start. So I didn't have time to read any of his work before we started straightaway. So it's very much like buying the books and trying to gather as much information as I could. So my first introduction was through Simon's scripts, and I was just so, so excited. I mean, this word is just crazy. I mean, it's just cool, like the characters are just so diverse, so timely. Everything's just magnificent. I don't know! I never really read a script like this before. I was just very overwhelmed by all the characters.
Dormer: Can I just say, on my first day filming, I was walking down the street with Detritus behind me, and I was walking with Marama as Angua and she just did this badass move! She takes out like two of these street thugs and I just went, "That's Angua!" As soon as I saw every single person, and as soon as I saw what they did, it was like, "This is the most perfectly cast show." I just think everybody brings to it an element that has real heart and warmth and punchy, sassy, funny stuff. I think everybody is superb in it.
Corlett: That was my favorite day, actually, looking back.
Allen: Oh, day one? They went downhill from there! [laughs] "My favorite day was the start, but after that..."
Corlett: [laughs] It's just, I look back, and I just remember seeing Vimes and Detritus walking towards me and Detritus is just so huge! And then Richard, he was just so immersed in this character, in this world that was created for us. So it was very easy to feel like you were really in Ankh-Morpork. It was just amazing and so surreal. Obviously, we all wanted to do a great job at it. So everyone was a bit nervous, I think! Right? Day one? But you see everyone in costume, and it just felt like it was coming to life from the scripts and the books.
Which aspect of your character do you relate to the most and why?
Dormer: Do you know what? I relate to every single aspect of my character! [laughs]
Eaton-Kent: I think the thing that I feel like I actually relate to the most, strangely enough, is actually the inquisitiveness and the curiosity that Cheery has. I don't know if this sounds a bit too self-aware, but I feel like I am quite a curious person in the same way the Cheery is. I think the way that Cheery sees the world and being able to look at it in the broad section of details that it is, as opposed to just the bigger picture. It is seeing it in all its intricacies. I like to see things like that a lot.
Hugill: From an acting perspective, you always have to draw from your own experiences or feelings within yourself throughout your life to really understand the character -- not that you're playing yourself or anything, but you have to draw on certain things and then adapt them into that character's mindset and how they would think and feel. I think there's a lot of my younger self in Carrot. I mean, I say that like I'm ancient! There's a lot of like the naivety. I mean, I'm still very naive every so often, but yeah, there's a lot of naivety, but also he's very strong willed as well and he wants to do the right thing. He wants to be a kind person in this very harsh world.
I think it was, for me, drawing some of my younger self or some of myself from the current Adam to him and really fleshing him out to make him feel as real as possible because he's got a bizarre background, you know? He's raised by dwarves, found out he's not a dwarf, even though he thinks he is a dwarf, which is mad. So yeah, trying to make them real in this fantasy world was what I enjoy most, trying to make them fully realized and believable, even in these crazy circumstances that they find themselves in.
Corlett: I guess, you know, you're always trying to find parts of yourself that you can mix with the character. I think it's like learning to be comfortable with who you are. I think growing up, it's just such a tough thing, to be free and to accept your upbringing and just who you've become or who you're trying to be. I guess that's one of the things. It's just still being on this journey of learning how to be free with who I am, and that's how I felt Angua was.
What do you hope viewers take away from the series?
Allen: I mean, obviously... we lean into the theme of watching and of doing much more and we lean into it pretty hard, probably, but the idea that you can do more than just watch, and the Watch's journey, as a bunch of characters from the margins of an absurd, upside down society towards its center. I think I would want people to take hope in the face of helplessness from it, to take the idea that you can do more than just stand by and watch, that even when everything is rigged against you -- hardwired against you -- you can actually transcend that and defeat it and find your own place in the center and change the center. I think that's definitely the overall arc of the series, and it was there in the books at the start, and it's in every single atom of this show, I think.
Dormer: Hear, hear! Yes, I agree. Yes. Very simply, I think people will take away with just this glow and a kind of achy face from smiling and laughing and maybe a little tear in their eye. I think there's a lot of hope and love in it. There's something I wanted to say earlier and it just occurred to me when Simon was speaking: this show, it doesn't break the fourth wall -- it breaks the fifth wall, whatever that is. I think that sums it up.
Hugill: I mean, for me, I think it's a really hopeful show, like we've said, and I think our world needs that at the moment. So I think, when it airs finally, people should just sit back and have a good time and revel in this world that is mad and crazy and ridiculous and just have a laugh and have some fun and really escape, because it is a hopeful, hopeful show, full of love and craziness. I think people need that right now. As corny as that sounds, I think people need a bit of escapism and just to enjoy something that is full of heart. God, that sounded corny.
Corlett: So we're just currently going through such a strange time in the world and, you know, living in such fear and uncertainty and, like Adam was saying, just like to escape that, to just go somewhere and just be able to free your mind and just free your heart. It's about what happens when we come together, rather than using fear and going against each other and riding that wave of fears to just come together, love and move forward.
Eaton-Kent: Yeah, I think -- to go back onto what Richard actually said -- you will come away from it with a broken fifth wall, and we will break your fifth wall. Not a threat, not a threat!
The Watch is executive produced by BBC Studios' Hilary Salmon (Luther) and Phil Collinson (Doctor Who). The series, which will run for eight episodes, is written by Simon Allen (Das Boot). It stars Richard Dormer, Anna Chancellor, Lara Rossi, Ingrid Oliver, James Fleet, Marama Corlett, Sam Adewunmi, Jo Eaton-Kent, Adam Hugill, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Ruth Madeley, Bianca Simone and Ingrid Oliver. The Watch will premiere on Jan. 3, 2021.