# Just finished watching Hogfather for the first time...
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [February 5, 2015, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880 "2015-02-05T12:22:19Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2015, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880/1 "2015-02-05T12:22:19Z")
… And I was quite disappointed. Now, I find myself wondering if its worth my time to keep my eyes open looking for any other BBC productions of Terry Pratchett novels.
Can anyone tell me yes? Pretty please?
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### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2015, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880/2 "2015-02-05T12:25:19Z")
Not everything British is made by the BBC. That was done on Sky One.
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2015, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880/3 "2015-02-05T12:30:11Z")
Hogfather wasn’t great.
Going Postal _is_ great.
I haven’t seen The Colour of Magic.
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### Author:  [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2015, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880/4 "2015-02-05T13:18:40Z")
IMHO, the video adaptations of the TP works I’ve seen have tried to reproduce the books too faithfully, right down to the dialogue and scenes. This has seemed to me to make the productions very stiff and unwieldy.
I did NOT care for the adaptations of TCOM or Hogfather much at all. I wasn’t all that fond of the book TCOM either. Hogfather was okay but not top tier TP.
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### Author:  [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2015, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880/5 "2015-02-05T14:00:55Z")
They got better as they went along. _Colour of Magic_, despite my misgivings about the casting choices, was actually pretty good. It’s not the best Discworld novel in the first place, it’s basically a series of disconnected vignettes tenuously linked together, and it was a satire of specific novels, that aspect being quite lost and obscured in this adaptation, putting it on a back foot. But, if I’m honest, taken at face value it’s not too shabby, really.
But, as **Sage Rat** said, they nailed it with _Going Postal_. There was talk of more with this cast, going on to do _Making Money_, but it never eventuated. The planned _City Watch_ series also hasn’t moved along very quickly, though it’s apparently not dead yet.
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### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2015, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880/6 "2015-02-05T14:06:28Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#):
>
> IMHO, the video adaptations of the TP works I’ve seen have tried to reproduce the books too faithfully, right down to the dialogue and scenes. This has seemed to me to make the productions very stiff and unwieldy.
>
> I did NOT care for the adaptations of TCOM or Hogfather much at all. I wasn’t all that fond of the book TCOM either. Hogfather was okay but not top tier TP.
Stiff is a good word for it. Hogfather had good moments but overall it felt stiff.
I have to watch Going Postal now. It was one of my favorite books in the series but I haven’t seen the adaption.
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### Author:  [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2015, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880/7 "2015-02-05T14:17:17Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#):
>
> They got better as they went along. _Colour of Magic_, despite my misgivings about the casting choices, was actually pretty good. It’s not the best Discworld novel in the first place, it’s basically a series of disconnected vignettes tenuously linked together, and it was a satire of specific novels, that aspect being quite lost and obscured in this adaptation, putting it on a back foot. But, if I’m honest, taken at face value it’s not too shabby, really.
>
> But, as **Sage Rat** said, they nailed it with _Going Postal_. There was talk of more with this cast, going on to do _Making Money_, but it never eventuated. The planned _City Watch_ series also hasn’t moved along very quickly, though it’s apparently not dead yet.
If they ever do the \*City Watch \* series I hope they find someone else to play Nobby. The only reason I hated that guy’s performance less than Teatime’s was because there was so much less of it.
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### Author:  [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2015, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880/8 "2015-02-05T14:23:37Z")
> [@Loach](#):
>
> Stiff is a good word for it. Hogfather had good moments but overall it felt stiff.
Worse than stiff, I thought. It felt like they were going down a checklist and ticking off points from the book, one by one. The fact that they so often failed to do it well only made things worse, IMHO.
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### Author:  [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2015, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880/9 "2015-02-05T14:30:01Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#):
>
> If they ever do the \*City Watch \* series I hope they find someone else to play Nobby. The only reason I hated that guy’s performance less than Teatime’s was because there was so much less of it.
The best Nobby I can think of at the moment is [Eddie Marsan](https://www.google.com.au/search?q=eddie+marsan&num=100&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=PH7TVKbtNo_W8gWk-oKQCw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1432&bih=856)\*. I made a [Pinterest board](https://www.pinterest.com/guanolad/discworld-casting/) of some possibles, too, that I keep updating.
\*_Who is about to be Mr Norrell_
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### Author:  [@Miss\_Mapp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Mapp)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2015, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880/10 "2015-02-05T15:49:17Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#):
>
> They got better as they went along. _Colour of Magic_, despite my misgivings about the casting choices, was actually pretty good. It’s not the best Discworld novel in the first place, it’s basically a series of disconnected vignettes tenuously linked together, and it was a satire of specific novels, that aspect being quite lost and obscured in this adaptation, putting it on a back foot. But, if I’m honest, taken at face value it’s not too shabby, really.
I did like the beginning, with Sean Astin as the clueless tourist and Jeremy Irons with his tiny, tiny dog, and the ending once they returned to the city. The adventures in between were, yeah, episodic and kind of hit-or-miss.
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### Author:  [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2015, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880/11 "2015-02-05T15:52:15Z")
I like Hogfather, but then I accept that it moves at a much slower pace than American productions.
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### Author:  [@Airk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airk)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2015, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880/12 "2015-02-05T16:23:53Z")
> [@Miss\_Mapp](#):
>
> I did like the beginning, with Sean Astin as the clueless tourist and Jeremy Irons with his tiny, tiny dog, and the ending once they returned to the city. The adventures in between were, yeah, episodic and kind of hit-or-miss.
My god, I loved Jeremy Irons as The Patrician (not, technically, Vetinari at this point), but I otherwise thought TCOM was…okay (Though I actually kinda liked Sean Astin too) And yes, a bit stiff. But actually, I don’t like the book either - I think Rincewind is funnier in concept than in execution - soooo…
I will see if I can find Going Postal.
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### Author:  [@sciurophobic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciurophobic)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2015, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880/13 "2015-02-05T16:44:30Z")
I don’t watch Downton Abbey so whenever I see or hear something about Michelle Dockery I think Susan.
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### Author:  [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)
#### Post date: [February 5, 2015, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880/14 "2015-02-05T20:18:48Z")
> [@Chimera](#):
>
> I like Hogfather, but then I accept that it moves at a much slower pace than American productions.
I had no quarrel with the pacing; in fact I would have loved it had it been a three-parter, so they could have included the “King Wenceslas” scene, the Cheerful Fairy, the bits in Biers, the erudite Raven, the disreputable Hogswatch “carolers”, the reversal of the link between Bilious and Bibulous, and the ultimate fate of the Johnson Ablutorium.
But just as a f’rinstance, Pratchett _told_ us, right in the book, how to pronounce “Teatime” (“Teh-a-TIM-eh,” _not_ “Tee-a-Time-ee”). And Teatime himself was portrayed as a skulking creep who could have passed for an older cousin of [the girls in _The Shining_,](http://www.brutalashell.com/images/twins_shining.jpg) with none of the demonic _joie de vivre_ that Pratchett put into the book. As soon as I heard that Mel-Blanc-imitating-Peter-Lorre voice, I knew I was in for a rough ride.
Nobby Nobbs looked (and acted) like an animatronic version of [Mortimer Snerd](http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/12926/13096800_2.jpg?v=8CF1F2A96F8BB20), as though the only salient characteristic about him is that he needs to carry around an official document certifying his species, and all the character has to do is say his lines on cue.
In truth, the interpretations of those two characters were the reason for my disappointment, and had they not been so dreadful I think I could have overlooked both the abbreviation of the gang invading the Tooth Fairy’s castle, and the cut-to-the-chase development of Bilious and Violet’s infatuation.
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### Author:  [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2015, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-finished-watching-hogfather-for-the-first-time/711880/15 "2015-02-07T20:16:13Z")
I liked _Hogfather_. Shows what Michelle Dockery can do, unlike her useless role on _Downton_. Marc Warren absolutely nailed Teatime. (It’s pronounced …)
Very well cast in general.
_Going Postal_ was total crap. Wrong actor entirely. (Jeff Murdoch is _not_ Moist Von Lipwig.) Changed too much of the story for no good reason, losing a lot of the original concept. Almost a completely different tale.
Just a generic filler cast.