CARDIFF (Wales) - "You speak of destiny as if it was fixed," writes English author Philip Pullman in the novel Northern Lights. This is certainly a view that finds a measure of support from television and film producer Jane Tranter who is overseeing the adaptation of Pullman's highly acclaimed His Dark Materials trilogy (1995 to 2000) for HBO and the BBC.

"As in His Dark Materials, there is a sense of destiny at play with this series," she says when we meet at the Cardiff offices of Bad Wolf, the production company she co-founded in 2015. "I think these books were destined to happen at a particular moment in time."