All three are misfits, who’d have had no place in Ankh-Morpork had Vimes not offered them jobs. He joins the cynical members of the Watch who have mostly given up on doing meaningful work: Sergeant Detritus, a Troll Angua, a werewolf and Cheery, a forensic expert and female dwarf. Whereas the Watch has been rendered ineffective by the deals that the various guilds have with the Patrician (the Thieves’ Guild has a quota of legally allowed thievery, and so long as the Assassins’ Guild has the proper paperwork for their inhumations, any murder they commit is legal), Carrot is a true believer in justice that serves the people and keeps them safe. Lady Sybil Ramkin (Lara Rossi), who becomes involved in the investigation in the book, insinuates herself into the investigation in The Watch as well and, already a force to be reckoned with, is an essential member of the team by the end of the second episode.Īlso drawing from Guards! Guards!, The Watch follows the arrival of Carrot-a 6’6” human raised by dwarves, who is as honest and forthright as the noblest traditional fantasy hero-as a new recruit to the City Watch. Carcer provides the face for that shadowy organization, as well. The first two episodes also borrow heavily from the plot-and some of the characterizations-in Guards! Guards! a secret organization steals a book to summon a dragon. In The Watch, Carcer is a more complex character, a gang leader who’d been trying to care for his own crew (though in questionable ways), and-by the end of the second episode-a driven man with a mission. But in the present, Vimes thinks he sees Carcer at a (psychedelic) tavern, and he begins investigating out of the feeling that he’s seen a ghost-and that somehow Carcer is involved in a greater plot.ĭiscworld fans will recognize bits of that story (some drawn from Night Watch) and see how it doesn’t quite line up with the series. Instead, inspired by Captain Keel of the City Watch, Vimes chases after Carcer to arrest him, and Carcer falls from Unseen University’s roof into flashes of lightning and, presumably, dies. In those earliest moments, viewers discover that Sam Vimes (Richard Dormer) became a member of the City Watch as an undercover member of a gang, run by criminal Carcer Dun (Samuel Adewunmi), to free the other gang members who had been arrested. It’s the flashbacks, both to twenty years earlier and to the events of the previous week, that present viewers with the story. The title of the first episode, “A Near Vimes Experience,” is a direct quote from the books-Death, who is a character (and is delightfully portrayed by Wendell Pierce, whose complaints about people interrupting him while he’s working allow Death some levity), frames the first episode by having Vimes’s life flash before his eyes. When Vetinari orders Vimes to investigate the theft of a book from the Unseen University library, everyone’s first response is to dismiss the concern: why would even a Watch as useless as Ankh-Morpork’s go after a stolen book? But the tome holds more danger than anyone realized, and Captain Sam Vimes and his team are embroiled in a mystery that involves dragons, drug deals, murdered alchemists and imps, a man who should have been dead the last twenty years, and a plot to burn the city to the ground.ĭespite standing on its own two feet, this adaptation excels when making direct nods to the book series (or at least it’s particularly thrilling to a fan like myself). The Watch ’s Discworld-primarily the urban sprawl of Ankh-Morpork-is a chaotic, messy place, dominated by vying guilds and ruled by Vetinari, the Patrician, who has only little use for the City Watch. If you’ve never read a Discworld book (let alone one of the “City Watch” subseries of novels), you’re in for a trip. The Watch isn’t the books-it’s becoming its own thing, and it may end up being more fun because of that. In fact, don’t even go in expecting something as faithful as Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. What readers should know is that the series is very much an adaptation, and while there are plenty of moments that are true to the originals, and add details from various books, don’t go in expecting something as faithful as Bridgerton. The Watch Episodes 1 and 2Īnyone who has read science fiction and fantasy novels in the last 40 years has at least heard of Terry Pratchett’s “Discworld,” and it’s with some trepidation and cautious optimism that fans of the books have anticipated the new BBC adaptation, The Watch, which focuses on some of the best-loved characters from the 41-book series.
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