There is some controversy surrounding the 2020 (just) BBC adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld (the show doesn’t adapt a single novel but elements of a couple of the novels based on the Ankh-Morpork city watch) but realigns it out of the author's sword & sorcery fantasy setting and into something that veers between urban fantasy and cyber-punk (I’d have said steampunk, almost, but it isn’t really that and it has an inconsistent mix of magic and technology). The opening title suggestion that we are in a distant secondhand dimension speaks to this, we are in a multiverse and this Ankh-Morpork is not the same one from the novels, the characters not exactly the same. Even the races are changed somewhat – most notably the dwarves who seem to be simply bearded humans, which makes the joke about foundling human brought up as a dwarf Carrot (Adam Hugill) fall somewhat flat.
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| Tarryn Wyngaard as Sally |
But, whilst I was an early fan of Pratchett, I didn’t stick with the books after a point and so don’t have the same loyalty to the fantasy setting that perhaps more consistent fans might have. Also, we vampire genre fans are all to used to having base material messed with – and embracing those changes. So, I did, in actual fact, rather dig the shift in tone. However this is not why we are here.
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| fangs on show |
I hadn’t actually watched the series until a friend, Ian, informed me that there was a vampire character, Sally (Tarryn Wyngaard), in the final two episodes. She is indeed there, and rather interested in Carrot (he’s a virgin) and not popular with Watch Corporal Angua (Marama Corlett), what with her being a werewolf and all… However she really is blink and you’ll miss her – a couple of very fleeting visitations. There was, in an earlier episode, a visit to a nursing home that also seemed to contain a vampire but, in that case, literally as window dressing.
Nevertheless, a fleeting visitation of a vampire, is still worthy of note. The imdb page is here.
On DVD @ Amazon US
On DVD @ Amazon UK
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