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Author Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels offer an alternate reality that has proven irresistible to an avid, international audience--a universe where the world really
is flat, after all, supported by four elephants floating through the cosmos on the back of a giant turtle. It's a world where fantasy conventions have been filtered through an antic, satirical lens that slyly warps the actions and motives of the wizards, witches, monarchs, and knaves that populate them, suggesting a sword & sorcery counterpart to Douglas Adams's venerable
A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Developed for British television as an animated, six-episode miniseries, Wyrd Sisters marks the first attempt at transferring the franchise to video. As presented here on three tapes, with a running time of approximately 147 minutes, Pratchett's cracked re-imagining of familiar mythological themes retains its verbal wit and realizes colorfully stylized visual terrain, although modest animation techniques relegate its impact to the realm of older TV cartoons. Sci-fi aficionados spoiled by lavish computer graphics and the current big-screen state of the art will wonder what all the fuss is about.
Pratchett's fans, however, won't mind. An intricate plot, set in motion by the murder of King Verence by the utterly dimwitted Duke Felmet, encompasses a smuggled baby, an itinerant theatrical troupe, a kiss lasting 18 years, time travel, and other pokerfaced twists of fate, cohering around the three title heroines, a coven of rather dotty witches. A droll, sociable Death (voiced by Christopher Lee) epitomizes the breezy comic spirit that fuels Pratchett's stories. --Sam Sutherland
From the Back Cover
The Discworld, that is, as created by Terry Pratchett in his riotous series of sci-fi/fantasy books. Discworld is populated by a cast of characters straight out of folklore and mythology, only a whole lot funnier. Take the Wyrd Sisters, for instance (they don't like that handle one bit, by the way), whose story is brought to life in this animated series. A motley trio of hardworking witches, they get mixed up in a royal mess when a murdered king's baby son is entrusted to their care. Though they hate meddling, the witches must wrest the kingdom from the loopy duke and his she-devil wife. DVD SPECIAL FEATURES AND EXTRAS INCLUDE Pratchett biography, original pilot video, storyboards, character biographies, Discworld booklist and selected web links. "The funniest parodist working in the field today, period" -The New York Review of Science Fiction. "Simply the best humorous writer of the twentieth century." - Oxford Times.
