When I was six years old, I fell earnestly, ferociously in love with Lyra Belacqua, who dragged me into her parallel Oxford – a weirdly Dickensian fantasy world of ragamuffins and zeppelins and clever girls who do not for one moment question their ability to be tooth-and-nail, scabby-kneed heroines – and never let me go. A year later, His Dark Materials, the Philip Pullman trilogy in which my beloved Lyra starred, was adapted and performed by the National Theatre: a beautiful, physical performance consisting of two full-length shows and featuring enormous, dexterous, human-operated puppets, the precursor to one of the National’s greatest successes, War Horse. Not until the creation of the iPad has a seven-year-old sat in a darkened room for five hours so unfalteringly entranced, fully convinced by the array of fantastical creatures who seemed to breathe life – entirely in line with Pullman’s exploration of the soul in the original books. Three years later in 2007, New Line productions spent $180 million on The Golden Compass, a starry Hollywood adaption of Northern Lights, the first of the trilogy. And it broke my heart.

10-year-old me was not the only one dissatisfied with this flashy yet diluted attempt to take Pullman’s hugely popular series to the big screen; the critical reception was poor, and the middling financial success of the film resulted in the production company’s restructuring, and the cancellation of any plans to continue with the trilogy. Fans such as myself were relieved, but it was assumed the failings of New Line would make His Dark Materials untouchable.

On 3rd November, however, it was announced that the BBC had given the green light to commission a television adaption, still funded by New Line (once again profitable thanks to The Hobbit franchise) but creatively produced by Bad Wolf Productions executives Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner, the women responsible for the unprecedentedly successful Doctor Who reboot in 2005. And we should all be very, very excited.

For those not au fait with His Dark Materials, the series is a fantasy adventure of the densest kind, concerned with the adventures of a pre-pubescent girl on the one hand, and a Milton-esque exploration of sin and criticism of the Catholic Church on the other. Unsurprisingly, this makes it rather difficult to boil down to a feature length film. While entering the more conventional worlds of Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings means that audiences who have never read the books are nevertheless comfortable with the rules and rituals of wizards, dwarves, and elves. Yet the total originality of Pullman’s parallel universe – a multi-world landscape filled with dust and daemons, alethiometers and angels – makes it extremely difficult to grasp in a mere two hours. But a television series, which as a dramatic format in the past 10 years has gone from strength to strength, will do justice to the narrative intricacies and philosophical undertones that make His Dark Materials so engaging, even more so with the creative input of Gardner and Tranter.

Indeed, the brilliance of His Dark Materials was that Pullman, himself a former school teacher, never underestimated his young audience, even if he only expected his readers to be the most “precocious” of their peer group. As it happened, the winning mix of challenging content and unashamed adventure resulted in the book being adored by adults too. Yet the task of adapting a novel which was critically praised by adults but sold in the children’s section of the bookshop was a confusing concept for New Line, who made the fatal error of thinking that adult viewers were most interested in the heavy dialogue and the Asriel/Coulter (or, perhaps more accurately, Daniel Craig/Nicole Kidman) romance, and that children could be pacified by some talking bears and an exuberant child actor.

Enter Gardner and Tranter. If there is anyone who knows about treading the intricate line between adults’ and children’s fiction, it is these two; their Doctor Who reboot deals with this balancing act with aplomb. In fact, when it came to the struggle of trying to please the pre-existing adult fans whilst simultaneously creating something new, exciting and, importantly, attractive to children, Tranter and Gardner more than simply ‘dealt’ with the issue: they owned it. Doctor Who quickly became known for its dark, difficult plot lines played out with the unlikely props of aliens, Converse and silly slapstick humour. Where New Line squirmed at any sign of religious or scientific controversy, writing and re-writing in its soul-sapping quest not to offend or displease anyone, the Doctor Who producers held fast in the face of initial critics who saw the time traveller as too edgy/too immoral/too smart – a move which has held the show in good stead for ten years.

His Dark Materials are books I can return to again and again, both for the intellectual rigour of untangling a new layer of Pullman’s critical philosophy, as well as the sheer pleasure of revisiting a most intricately realised world of adventure. The first film may have endangered my love affair with the trilogy, but I have not been this excited about a production in a long time – and my six-year-old self desperate to be Lyra Belacqua knows it. The Golden Compass tried to sugar-coat and glitter-ify, as the America-friendly title change demonstrates. I have no doubt that Bad Wolf’s offering can bring the trilogy back to its darker roots – as long as the BBC will let it.