They’re making a Harry Potter television show – you might’ve heard. Specifically, it’s a reboot – they’re just going to redo the entire film series as a television series.
Most people, when this information and idea is thrust upon them, just respond ‘Why?’. What’s the point of making a television show of the series? The films were pretty much perfect. Sure, they had a few issues with them, but what film doesn’t? The issues with the series are quite minor, and overall the films are very good. They’re even better when you consider that most attempts at an eight-film series fail (most don’t even get to the third one without going horribly wrong), and the Harry Potter films are remarkably consistent in style.
So why? Why bother making a television series? Some have suggested that it will allow them to include elements from the books that weren’t included in the films. Films tend to be less than 2 ½ hours, and they often aim for 1 ½ hours, so there are just things you can’t include from a book as long as The Goblet of Fire. The total runtime of a television series is, of course, much longer – particularly if it’s one of those 24-episode series’ that the US likes to do.
But the problem is, the films are iconic. Even if you manage to include all of the elements of the book that were missed out from the films, you are never going to beat the music of the films. You are never going to beat the music of John Williams. You are never going to beat the aesthetic of the films. You are never going to beat the perfect casting – there just isn’t better casting than Richard Harris, Dame Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, Richard Griffiths, Fiona Shaw, Jason Isaacs, Gary Oldman, Timothy Spall, Kenneth Branagh – it’s not just that Hollywood is unable to cast such talented actors anymore, such good actors don’t even really exist anymore – there isn’t a new generation of actors that have come along that can match the last one.
The films were also all made before Hollywood went insane. We’re in a post-Last-Jedi world, where every film and television show to come out of America seems to have been written and directed by demented sociology professors. ‘There is no good or evil; there is only power’ is a line spoken by Voldemort in the first film – how can Hollywood possibly make a television show with this guy as the primary villain when so many of them actually believe this idea to be true? Are we going to get told that Voldemort isn’t actually evil, he’s just misunderstood? Is he only evil because ‘society made him that way’? Is he going to be made ‘morally grey’? Hollywood cannot adapt a story it does not understand. Hollywood will be unable to match the charm of the films. Almost every line from the first two films is memorable – I predict that none from the television show will be.
So there is no point. There is no point to making this television show. It cannot possibly outmatch or even just match the films.
If this wasn’t enough to render the show a waste of time and money, the few details that have been revealed about the show so far have been an absolute car crash.
Among these is the casting of John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore. Now don’t get me wrong – Lithgow is a brilliant actor. But he’s American. For the films, I recall that J. K. Rowling had insisted on only casting British actors for the British parts. At the time I instinctively understood the reason for this. American actors act with a different style to British actors. It is, much like the Americans themselves, more brash, more over-the-top, and overconfident. These are not qualities that British people themselves typically have, and so when Americans try to play British roles, they stand out like bird shit on a chip. Also, American actors are rarely able to do a British accent well.
Now, John Lithgow neither has this brashness to his acting style nor an inability to do a British accent – his rendition of Churchill in The Crown was fantastic. He may even do quite well as Dumbledore. But I think the principle of not having American actors playing British parts is still a good one to follow. Every American cast will have an obstacle to get past which is their lack of familiarity with the British way of being. They will stand out in a story that is quintessentially British.
By far the most tweet-worthy detail to have been released, however, is the casting of a person named Paapa Essiedu – a Ghanaian actor who grew up in London – in the role of Severus Snape, played iconically in the films by Alan Rickman.
Essiedu is not the same ethnicity as Severus Snape, and this is yet another example of ‘blackwashing’ from Hollywood – changing the ethnicity of characters from a European ethnicity to an African or Middle Eastern ethnicity.
Hollywood keeps doing this. And it’s infuriating because all of the Leftoids who scream bloody murder when ‘whitewashing’ occurs (even though that’s usually done just to put a big-money celebrity in the main role) are completely silent when it’s done the other way round – or even worse, they egg it on. It’s also infuriating because, as I’ve mentioned when Russell T. Davies did this in Doctor Who, it is always done for ideological reasons. Hollywood, like much of the political left today, has a deep hatred of Europeans – most of all the British, most of all the English. The reason why Hollywood does this is because they truly hate what they call ‘white’ people (a deeply flawed term) and want to see them erased from both history and art. Hollywood would call it ‘Anti-Racism’ – but it’s the deep irony of the ideology of ‘Anti-Racism’ that it is actually just racism with a different name.
Why would I watch a show about a classic British story when the makers of the show are indicating that they subscribe to an ideology that hates everything that is British?
So this show is dead on arrival – dead before arrival. There is simply no reason to watch it – it can do nothing but fail.
I’m not sure why J. K. Rowling keeps greenlighting these projects. I think she should be more concerned with the failed Fantastic Beasts series. That series was cut short at three films – it was supposed to be five. The three films we got weren’t very good. It just wasn’t a good story – nothing on par with the story of Harry Potter. In fact it didn’t even feel like they took place in the same universe. Rowling should have written that story as a book series first, and then allowed them to be adapted into films. And if she wants that story to exist as anything other than a failure, she should go back, write it as a book series, ignoring everything that was done in the films. That is probably more important and worthwhile than supervising another adaptation of the original books.