BBC America's The Watch has proven to be a source of great controversy. Most of the outrage has come from fans of the late Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, who feel that showrunner Simon Allen has gone too far in his attempt to develop a fantasy-themed police procedural with only a loose connection to the source material. Ironically, some of these complaints are born of the belief that Allen has subverted some of Pratchett's best female characters with his efforts to diversify the show's cast.
Set in Ankh-Morpork, the largest city of the The Watch is centered around Captain Sam Vimes, a former gang member gone good, who is nominally in charge of the City Watch. As the show opens, Vimes is a drunken mess, barely coherent most days, due to his depression over how pointless his position is in a city where the Thieves and Assassins are unionized and most crime is legal so long as the criminal leaves a receipt. What few illegal crimes remain are stamped out by the guilds themselves, as they're in a far better position to deal with scab criminals than Vimes and his crew of misfits. However, the sudden appearance of a familiar face from Vimes' past forces him to sober up and smarten up when the fate of the city (and possibly the whole Disc) is thrust into his hands.
While some enjoyed the first two episodes of The Watch as an individual work, the reaction to the series has been largely indifferent from those who are unfamiliar with the source material. Discworld fans, however, almost uniformly loathed the series and lamented that the BBC saw fit to spend money on it rather than a more faithful adaptation of Discworld. Author Neil Gaiman, who co-wrote Good Omens with Pratchett and oversaw its adaptation into a television series, was also uncharacteristically critical, describing The Watch as being like a Batman show where "he’s now a news reporter in a yellow trenchcoat with a pet bat."
The Beginnings Of The Watch And Behind The Scenes Turmoil
The groundwork for a television series based around Sir Terry Pratchett's Watch books began in 2011. The series was announced as a collaboration between Pratchett and the BBC, which would be overseen by Prime Focus Productions: the same company that had produced several other live-action adaptations of Pratchett's novels for Sky One. This changed somewhat in 2012, when Pratchett established a new independent production company, Narrativia, to manage all future adaptations of his work, under the supervision of his daughter, Rhianna Pratchett. The younger Pratchett is also an acclaimed writer, most famous for her work on the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot.
Hopes were high for this Watch series, which was to run for 13 episodes with a $35 million budget and be co-written by Rhianna Pratchett. Rather than adapting the books centered around the City Watch of Ankh-Morpork directly, the series was planned to parody police procedurals and pit a new team of watchmen against the sort or problems that complicate crime-solving in a fantasy world, such as a murder being reported by the victim, who just rose from the dead as a zombie. Monty Python founder Terry Jones was also signed on to the project at one point, as either a co-writer or director.
Unfortunately, the arrangement fell apart shortly after Sir Terry Pratchett's death from Alzheimer's disease in 2015. While the show was still in the works in October 2016 under Rhianna Pratchett's supervision, the BBC shifted the production to the aegis of BBC America in October 2018 at a drastically reduced budget than what had been reported previously. When asked about the new series in August 2019, Rhianna Pratchett confirmed she had not been involved with the show for several years. This was due to a legal loophole in the original contract, which gave all creative control of the project to Sir Terry Pratchett rather than Narrativia, which did not exist yet when the original contracts were signed. This allowed the BBC to place The Watch in the hands of producer Simon Allen, best known for his work on The Musketeers.
The Watch Is "Inspired By" Rather Than "Based On" Discworld
Rather than adapting the City Watch books directly, Allen elected to use Pratchett's work as a springboard for his own idea for a police procedural set in a fantasy world. In the first announcement regarding The Watch series, Allen said the show would be “inspired by” Pratchett's books rather than "based on" them. With an aesthetic alternatively defined as steampunk and cyberpunk and a story described as "a punk rock thriller," many wondered why BBC America and Allen bothered to utilize the Discworld in the first place rather than create their own urban fantasy setting. It didn't help matters that Allen didn't mention Pratchett when listing all the creative people who helped bring The Watch into being.
The resulting series has proved maddening for how it was promoted as its own entity, yet was entirely beholden to Pratchett's work. Those Discworld fans willing to give The Watch a chance to stand on its own merits were stunned to find how much the series was based around the plots of Pratchett's novels. At the same time, newcomers were confused by elements of the Ankh-Morpork setting that seem to require a basic familiarity with Pratchett's work. In this The Watch could be compared to the failed 2005 Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy film adaptation, which also made a number of changes to the book's story and characters to make the movie more accessible to general audiences, while still being packed with Easter eggs only Douglas Adams devotees would understand.
The Watch Is An Arbitrarily More Diverse Discworld (Sort Of)
The BBC America website describes The Watch as a "modern and inclusive series," and much of the show's promotional material has made a point of promoting Simon Allen's decision to gender-flip and race-flip many of the show's key characters. The irony is that while the fantasy genre has long been dominated by white men, Discworld has always been an egalitarian setting. While the official Discworld artists often depicted the protagonists as white, Pratchett rarely made specific references to skin color in his writing. Indeed, he specifically noted that the Discworld was free of racism in the novel Witches Abroad, "because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on — speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green." Curiously, the streets of Ankh-Morpork in The Watch seem largely devoid of trolls and dwarfs and so on, with all of the background players looking decidedly human, despite the city being the Discworld's largest melting pot.
Four Weddings and a Funeral's Anna Chancellor mattered little to Discworld fans, despite the character being male in the books. However, the pilot episode prominently features a poster of Lord Vetinari that depicts her as a sharp-featured man with a trim goatee, which is consistent with Pratchett's description of (the male) Lord Vetinari from the books. The inexplicable contradictory images of the same character serve only to confuse fans, who are left wondering if the choice was intentional fan-service or just bad planning from the design team.
The Watch changes Lady Ramkin
One change that has sparked protest among Discworld fans is The Watch's take on Lady Sybil Ramkin. Played by Lara Rossi of the 2018 Robin Hood movie and described as the "last scion of the nobility," Lady Ramkin is a vigilante with a deep hatred of Ankh-Morpork's legally protected criminal class, who is handy with an axe and not above using her pet dragon Goodboy as an improvised weapon. This is a far cry from the Lady Ramkin of the books, who was not a fighter but still a fearsome and strong-willed woman who did not back down from a challenge, having acquired tremendous fortitude and a long stubborn streak after spending most of her life living a sheltered existence running a dragon sanctuary.
When Lady Ramkin first appeared in Guards! Guards! she was described as a woman of middle years with the physique of Sam Vimes (Richard Dormer) the middle-aged cop that is her love interest.
The Watch Changes Discworld's Dwarfs And Gender Identity
Perhaps the most controversial gender-flip change in The Watch involves the character of Cheery; the dwarf who runs the City Watch CSI unit. Played by gender-fluid actor Jo Eaton-Kent, Cheery was described in early press releases regarding the show as an "ingenious non-binary forensics expert." The controversy, in this case, has nothing to do with The Watch employing a gender-queer actor, but in how Discworld fans believe Simon Allen did a disservice to another beloved female character for the sake of appearing progressive.
The dwarfs of Discworld were created as parodies of the dwarves of the Lord of the Rings books, specifically in how dwarven men and women were indistinguishable to other races, with both genders having thick beards. Cheery was a rebel among her people, who rejected the dwarf tradition of gender neutrality so that she could assert her femininity by wearing make-up, skirts and using female pronouns. Eventually she asked that her friends and co-workers pronounce her name "Cheri." Again, Discworld fans have noted the irony that in attempting to broadcast how diverse The Watch is by employing a non-binary actor to play a non-binary character, they have repressed one of Sir Terry Pratchett's most prominent feminist characters and one who has a huge following among trans fantasy fans, given Cherry's struggle to assert her gender.