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Unseen Academicals cover art

Unseen Academicals

By: Terry Pratchett
Narrated by: David Jason, Jon Culshaw, Mathew Horne, Josie Lawrence, Jaime Winstone
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Publisher's Summary

Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork - not the old fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go gloing when you drop them. And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else. 

The prospect of the Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr Nutt (and no one knows anything much about Mr Nutt, not even Mr Nutt, which worries him, too).

As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed for ever. Because the thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football.

This Audible Original multicast dramatisation is directed by the multiaward-winning Dirk Maggs, best known for his adaptations of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere for the BBC.

Starring Tom Alexander, Samantha Béart, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Mark Benton, Stephen Briggs, Stephen Critchlow, Jon Culshaw, Phil Davis, Ray Fearon, Tony Gardner, Edward Harrison, David Holt, Mathew Horne, David Jason, Josie Lawrence, Toby Longworth, Harry Myers, Maggie Service, Andrew Spooner, Steven Webb, Keith Wickham and Jaime Winstone.

©2018 Terry and Lyn Pratchett (P)2018 Audible, Ltd

What listeners say about Unseen Academicals

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  • Overall
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Disappointing Adaptation

If you are a Pratchett fan and have read and enjoyed this book, do yourself a favour and skip this. If you are new to Pratchett/Discworld, do yourself a favour and run away! Run away and find the Stephen Briggs narration, and your money will not be wasted. The writers have completely butchered this story as well as the representation of well-established Discworld characters (e.g. Vimes giving Vetinari his resignation).
The voice actors give good performances, particulalry David Jason who has starred in 2 different good Discworld TV dramatizations. This adaptation, however, is rubbish.

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Disappointing adaptation

A heavy-handed adaptation that loses much of the fun and comic inventiveness of the novel. Conflicts and antagonisms are exaggerated in the dialogue and also in the special effects that make the football games sound more like a sustained civil war. Characters are also changed with Vetinari more like a playboy villain and Nutt a smug Jeeves.
I also thought the film score like music was overused to insist on a certain emotion in various scenes.
An adaptation doesn’t have to be entirely faithful to be enjoyable, but this one exaggerates the conflict, is not very funny and is not helped by the plodding pace of David Jason’s narration.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliantly entertaining production!

I am a Pratchett fan, and I always enjoy the content of his novels.

This production of one of his hidden gems is highly entertaining. It's not just a reading, not just a cast - this is a show!

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  • Overall
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Loved it!

Yes, the story has been re written, and I totally and still love the original BUT, I thought the whole performance made it. Enjoyed the character voices and being a full cast drama was fun and brought life to the story.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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Very disappointing especially for Pratchett fans

I really hate to do this but this is nothing like the original book. It had been completely rewritten and unfortunately not in a good way. The characters are almost unrecognisable except for their names. The production value is great and so is the music and sound effects but if you are familiar with any of Terry's writing you will very likely be disappointed. It's essentially a completely different story and reads nothing like a discworld novel. All that aside it would probably be great for kids who aren't familiar with discworld.

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Bad adaptation.

Didn't like this adaptation at all. Shame as this is a favourite book of mine.

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A travesty

Not written by a person who knows or loves Disc World. Unnecessary story changes, bad casting, completely changing the character of some of the characters. Listen to BBC radio 4 adaptations especially the ones done by Dirk Maggs and learn.

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