The season of goodwill may be upon us, but something is deeply wrong. The
jolly old fat man has gone missing. The Grim Reaper has donned a fake white
beard, mounted a hog-drawn sleigh and is ready to deliver the presents. A
lethally loopy assassin is at large, having “applied himself to a study of
ways of killing Death”.
And, on a winter wonderland film set in East London, the distinct feeling
persists that Christmas has taken a reality-lurch sideways. A fireplace
suddenly belches out David Jason, who lands in a soot-covered heap. A
fairytale ice-castle made of polystyrene blocks is revealed, on closer
inspection, to be the “Castle of Bones”. The yuletide spirit is turning
darker by the minute . . . Or rather, it is in Terry Pratchett’s
reality-skewed universe. This isn’t Christmas at all, less cynical readers
will be relieved to hear, it is Hogswatch and — as any of the phenomenally
successful author’s fans will know — the basis of his 1997 Discworld novel, The
Hogfather. What Pratchett-heads may be more surprised to read is that
Death is about to have a new lease of life as a Christmas TV star on Sky
One.
Expect Sky to hype to the rafters the way it has bagged the first liveaction,
big-budget adaptation of a Discworld novel — in fact, of any Pratchett tome.
With 35 Discworld volumes to date (translated in 36 countries; 41 million
sales and counting; 3 per cent of the entire books trade in the UK), what is
remarkable is that it has taken this long for one to be screened. There
have, though, been animated adaptations and plays; Pratchett once described
how he “laughed like mad” all the way through one “astonishing” stage
production in Prague.
“A job well done, I feel”
The writer is on set for the day and, as ever, looks every inch the fantasy
author: a black leather coat, a trim white beard under his black fedora, a
stream of briskly intelligent, entertaining answers to questions he must
have predicted as soon as he signed on Sky’s dotted line. Actors lurk around
the set. Marc Warren (the cheeky chappie in BBC One’s Hustle)
has acquired a dark glass eye for his role as the assassin Teatime, and is
delivering lines in sinisterly effete tones located somewhere between Peter
Lorre and Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka (toned down, he admits, after Pratchett
expressed early reservations). A Gothic Mary Poppins drifts past, actually a
young actress, Michelle Dockery, in full make-up for the role of Susan. The
writer-director Vadim Jean appears to be running on super-strength caffeine;
he admits he’s been working from 6am to midnight every day for weeks.
So to the burning question of why now, after all these years? Pratchett
explains in his reedy voice: “Vadim came down to talk to me about the idea
of adapting Hogfather and was very enthusiastic, which I instantly
distrust among movie people! But he seemed to have got the novel. I
was asking all the little test questions and he was answering them, and I
kept thinking: ‘Any minute now the top of his head’s going to split open and
the tentacles will come out.’ Then he came round with the script and I
thought, ‘This guy really has got it.’ ”
Praise indeed, but why Sky? Add into the equation the success of The Lord
of the Rings and Harry Potter movie adaptations, and it would be
frankly amazing if Hollywood moguls hadn’t been knocking, Discworld having
the potential to be an even deeper seam of fantasy to mine.
Pratchett reasons: “It’s remarkably easy to sell film rights. Selling film
rights to someone who’s actually going to make the film is hard, selling to
someone who’s going to make a good film is practically impossible. I’ve
bought back the rights to two books that I sold, which wasn’t cheap.”
Pratchett — formerly a news journalist and a press officer answering for three
nuclear power stations — is fiercely protective of his work. Perhaps having
noted the animosity expressed by Philip Pullman or by the graphic novelist
Alan Moore towards big-screen adaptations of their work, he sees television
as a more accommodating medium for his intricate narratives — there is
simply far too much going on in an average Discworld novel for a two-hour
movie to do it justice.
“You can get more involved,” Pratchett agrees, comparing it with a boy being
allowed to play with a father’s train set. “I went to see the wizards’
Hogswatch party some weeks ago and it looked so beautiful. The obscure corners of London are becoming the city of Ankh-Morpork.”
For all Pratchett’s enthusiasm, you suspect that the more ardent fans, as with
the devotees of any cult fiction, will view the idea of a film with a mix of
anticipation and suspicion — one wrong detail and it is easy to envisage
Pratchett’s website under siege from disgruntled geeks. Jean admits: “I’ve
made one small mistake so far, which I’m really annoyed about. Pratchett
fans will spot it. So I hope Terry forgives me for occasionally requesting
information like ‘I can’t get a wren! Would a lark work?’ We have actually
had people out trying to catch one.” Overhearing this, Pratchett remarks: “A
thrush would be better.” Someone else suggests a robin, prompting furrowed
brows all round.
“Work with me on this, Albert”
For the uninitiated, The Hogfather goes something like this. On the
night before Hogswatch (ie, Christmas), mysterious shadows known as the
Auditors have put a contract out on the Hogfather (ie, Santa). With the big
man out of the picture, his place is taken by Death, the 7ft, unfailingly
polite skeletal entity whose words in the books are ALWAYS SPOKEN IN
CAPITALS, however mundane they may be, and which in the film will be graced
by the baleful tones of Ian Richardson. It’s up to Death’s frosty
granddaughter, Susan, to rescue the real Hogfather and put a stop to the
madness.
It is quintessential Pratchett, upending conventional concepts and satirising
petty jobsworths, its nimbly complex humour having much in common with G. K.
Chesterton’s philosophy of fantasy — turning the everyday on its head in
absurd fashion to point out the profound — as it does the mind-bending
inventiveness of Lewis Carroll.
On the evidence of an early cut of The Hogfather, Pratchett’s decision
to go small-screen would appear to be justified. The tone is dark yet
humorous, the CGI effects don’t feel intrusive, and there are enough
quasi-scientific curveballs present in Pratchett’s text to please the
converted without baffling newcomers.
And then there is David Jason as Albert, Death’s sherry-guzzling factotum —
or, as Jason describes him, “a bit like Peter Mandelson used to be to Tony
Blair”. Jason sees this as a return to the more comic roles that made his
name. “You couldn’t get more off-the-wall than being Death’s assistant,
really, could you?” To understand the comic element, it is important to
realise that in Discworld, Death is a loveable eccentric, reliably courteous
in his curiosity about the human condition, even as he takes a person’s
soul. He and Albert make a peculiarly cuddly odd couple. “It’s not a working
relationship that I have normally with actors,” Jason agrees. “I played a
couple of scenes with Death the other day, and I find it intriguing because
you don’t get much back from a skull.”
What is the spirit of Hogswatch?
But at the heart of all the curious absurdities and comical grotesques
(Bilious, the bleary God of All Hangovers, is a personal favourite) is a
more subversive riff on the nature of belief. Death warms to the more
magical spirit of Hogswatch while Albert has a cynical view of the seasonal
rituals. Lurking in the pair’s discussions are ruminations on ancient
secular folklore connected to the dark turn of the year: of the sun dying,
of electing a king for 12 days, letting him feast before slaughtering him,
of blood on the snow, red on white. Mankind’s need for myth at this time of
year as fundamental to what constitutes humanity.
Pratchett explains: “The background to The Hogfather is the
ceremonies of the dark time of winter. I’m sure everyone knows that
Christmas, as it were, became pasted on to what was already a tradition in
the heart of mankind. Hogswatch is clearly the difficult version of
Christmas. But it deals with an idea that is close to my heart — that it is
our fantasies that make us real. Without our fantasies we’re just a blank
monkey.
“We start off believing things like the tooth fairy and Father Christmas, and
that educates us to believe in bigger fantasies like justice. You can grind
down the whole universe into a powder and you will still find no single atom
of justice. We created it, we created all kinds of things and wove them into
the world around us. As far as we know no other animal does this. Yet people
will fight and die for something called justice. It’s one of the nicer
things about humanity that we do live by our sword.”
Of course, the Hogfather film, like the book, is close enough to our
reality to be enjoyed simply as a fantastical seasonal adventure. Which
raises the question: are the traditional festivities celebrated chez
Pratchett? “What do you mean? Having none of the family talking, or running
around looking for a shop that’s open for batteries?! Yes, I enjoy Christmas
— you can’t help it.”
Warming to the theme, he concludes with a rather enchanting seasonal
contemplation: “There’s a lovely poem by Thomas Hardy, which works best as
song, in which someone suggests on Christmas Eve that the animals can speak.
The poem is about how they actually go out into the stable in the hope of
this being true. Christmas is the one time when you want to come to some
accommodation with magic. Actually, you need a better word than magic — the
numinous would be a better word.
The ethereal.”
And on that note I swear that a long, skeletal finger taps him lightly on the
shoulder and a low voice resounds “NOW WE REALLY MUST BE GOING, MR P. HAPPY
HOGSWATCH. ER, OH YES . . . HO! HO! HO!”
The Hogfather is shown in two parts on Sky One, Dec 17 & 18, 8pm; The
Making of The Hogfather is on Sky One, Dec 10, 8pm
