This episode combined with the last one has convinced me that the first one was a dud and that I can hope for better in the future. Everything that concerns Lyra stays true enough to the book, and I quite like a few of the changes they made, like how Ma Costa tells Lyra about her mother. I also like Ma Costa teaching Lyra her "gyptian tricks". Not in the book, but a nice foreshadowing for those who have read the book. However I think they would have benefitted from showing Lyra having connections to the gyptians from earlier. Also I feel that they could have done a better job of the gyptian meeting, which felt very rushed, and the spy fly incident, which was laughebly short and forced. I think the paceing of Lyra's story gets harmed by showing Boreal all the time. I still don't see where that is going, and they are just trowing all the spoilers out there from the second book. What made me love the second book so much was the intital mystery of all the new characters, that you bit by bit untangled untill you had the whole puzzle, but the characters only had half the pieces, trying to find eachother without knowing that the other person had the rest of the pieces. At this rate they might as well just skip the second book all together, or cram it all into one episode, and then move on to the thrid book. Previous annoyances with questionable casting, particualrly concerning James Cosmo as Farder Coram, and Daemons being absent or way to far away still stands from earlier episodes.
Review of The Spies
