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Storyline
Based on Terry Pratchett's 33rd Discworld novel involves a skillful con artist Moist Von Lipwig who finds the tables turned and it's he himself who conned into becoming the Ankh-Morpork Postmaster General. A position that has not been filled in years.
Written by
Richard Johnson
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Did You Know?
Trivia
Not being a professional actor,
Terry Pratchett apparently had some difficulty in his small walk-on role and, in his own words, "needed six takes to master the tricky task of walking across the room".
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Goofs
When Groat stamps the letter, we see the letter in closeup as he bangs the stamp down in the very corner of the envelope. In the next shot, from a different angle, the stamp is in a different place on the envelope.
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Quotes
Adora Belle Dearheart:
[
taking Moist's letter]
Is it an apology?
Moist Von Lipwig:
It's worse than that.
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Crazy Credits
The author of the book on which this miniseries is based, Terry Pratchett, is credited in the opening credits of both parts with the line '"Mucked About" by Terry Pratchett'
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I've only come to the Discworld fairly recently and 'Going Postal' was the first book I read. I've found it one of the most enjoyable books in the series, and Moist Von Lipwig is by far and away my favourite character. So I had a vested interest in this, Sky's third adaptation of a Terry Pratchett novel.
After the first episode aired, I was in raptures. It was well filmed, the script was good, it had remained fairly faithful to the plot and it appeared to be well cast (although all the way through I expected Richard Coyle to jump into the TARDIS as there's something very Doctor Who-ish about his performance. And I thought Adora Belle Dearheart wasn't written very well at all). The second episode, however, was very disappointing. It seemed that the writers had read half of 'Going Postal' and then left their copy on the bus so had to resort to making the end of the story up. I cannot understand why they would change it so drastically. There's artistic license, and then there's sheer stupidity.
I guess we cannot expect any better from the writers. For a screenplay to be 100% true to the book, Pratchett would have to write it himself and now that's never going to happen. I would have liked to have seen them have a crack at 'Making Money' but their ending of 'Going Postal' hardly segues smoothly into the following book.
I prefer 'Hogfather', but 'Going Postal' is still very entertaining. You just have to try to forget ever having read the book.