But why adapt this decades old trilogy now? Thorne has said that “we live in scary times and I think there’s so much in Philip’s book that’s about now and where we’re at now, even more than when he first wrote it”.

And he’s right. His Dark Materials is a fantasy series that is pertinent for a time when there are grave fears worldwide that democratic processes and institutions are under threat, whether they be in Trump’s US or in other countries where populist leaders and movements have won favour. However, adapting epic fantasy novels and trying to retain all their themes is fraught with difficulties as fans of Frank Herbert’s Dune, for example, can attest.

Indeed there has been one unsuccessful attempt to adapt His Dark Materials before: the 2007 Hollywood film The Golden Compass, which omitted the books’ darker themes and flopped at the box office. The creators of this version have evidently learnt the lessons of that failure. Thorne has worked closely with Pullman so that his vision is not diluted in any way. The pair had regular meetings so that Thorne could “serve the books” and bounce ideas off him.

What’s more, the epic nature of the story suits a lavish slow-burn TV series more than it does a feature film format and will hopefully give Pullman’s series the cultural reach of Game of Thrones. Like GoT, His Dark Materials features a huge cast of characters and a complex plot, which at first is a lot to take in.