It would be no exaggeration to say that I’ve been counting down the days until the release of the first episode of what will hopefully be HBO’s next great voyage into epic fantasy: His Dark Materials. For all that the final season of Game of Thrones left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, as a whole I’d found myself enchanted by the HBO adaptation of one of my favourite epic fantasy series, and I sincerely hoped that the new series would capture the magic of Pullman’s novels.

I was not disappointed. HBO’s His Dark Materials, having learned a few things from the previous film attempt to adapt the series, gives us a series that is a scathing indictment of dogmatic religion, as well as the mingled whimsy and danger that was always one of the most appealing things about the novels.

The first episode sets out…