Harry Potter Full Cast Audio Series Books 1-7: Our Verdict

0:05 Hello and welcome to Myth Makers. Myth Makers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and today I am joined by friend of the podcast, Andrew Head, who is over in Australia. So Andrew, say hello to everybody. Hello. Andrew is our go-to on audiobooks because Andrew is a registered blind reader or consumer of audiobooks. And we have been dipping into the various fantasy genres which have made their way into audio.

0:51 And today's subject is we are dealing with now the complete set of the Harry Potter full cast editions. Now, Andrew, we've talked to you already about when the series started off. So in this new one, what did you think about the latter half, books four to seven, and the move to... a different set of voices for the main three actors. Just to sort of run you through that, we've got Harry Potter is played by Jackson Knopf. I think that's how you say his surname. Ron is played by Rhys Mulligan and Hermione by Nina Baker Francis.

1:34 How did you find that shift? Overall, I thought it was very good. To tell you the truth, I was a little bit confused at first. When you had Harry and Ron together, it was a bit hard to, for me, it was a bit hard to tell the difference between the two of them for a little while. I don't know, maybe three or four chapters in. After they pick Harry up from the Dursleys, about three or four chapters later, I started to get used to it. Yeah, I mean, what they don't have... For whatever reason.

2:16 I mean, when you did the films, of course, they had children growing up. So the voices changed naturally. Here, because the fact they've produced them within a year, they can't wait for the original cast to grow up. So they thought, right, let's just have a new set of actors. They've kept the same adult actors, of course, and the older Weasleys, but everybody else shifted. So, you know, you can see why they did it. Yeah. I do agree with you, though. Yeah, absolutely. They've gone for a fairly kind of RP English approach. And so the boys do have a similar, what's the word, timbre to their voice, don't they?

2:57 Yeah. You have to concentrate to work out who's... So of the four, so that's The Goblet of Fire, The Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and The Deathly Hallows. And of course, these are much longer books. Did you enjoy all of them, or is there any fails amongst the cluster? From the audio perspective, full-class perspective? Yeah. Yes, I suppose it could be. This is interesting, isn't it? Because it could be that you have a feeling about the actual book that means it isn't as good as the others.

3:37 But, for example, which one would you say worked the best in this new forecast audio? Which one were you cheering at and sort of really involved? Ooh. Ah. Ooh. That's a trippy one. Well, I'll give you a steer. I thought that the Goblet of Fire works well, particularly things like starting at the Quidditch World Cup and the atmosphere of that and the atmosphere of the graveyard. I think some of these things actually work really well when you haven't got the visuals and you're hearing the soundscapes of how big it all is and how scary it is.

4:22 So for me, as someone who's seen the films, I thought that actually these work really well. And the one that for me didn't work as well is the Half-Blood print, partly because I find it just tedious. I don't like that story. I don't think it works as a book as well as the others because of the continual going back in time through Pensieve and all this. It doesn't have the same forward momentum as the others. So I find that a less interesting story. So for me, that's the way around. I'd say The Goblet of Fire was probably the best of them.

5:02 I mean, definitely Hallows was good too, but Goblet of Fire was good. Well, that's very interesting because I – we may as well talk about this now. My favourite book overall, regardless of the format, well, apart from the movies, but we can get on to that later. My favourite book is The Goblet of Fire, For a number of reasons. In general, because, I mean, it's the darkest up until this point that we've seen, if you're reading them from Philosopher's Stone, it's the darkest up until this point, and it's when Voldemort returns.

5:43 Spoiler alert. Yeah, I think our listeners will have cut that one out. I know. Yeah, I know. I'm just joking. Yeah. And it's so different, like, you've got to the other three. You know, you've got the Trials and Tournament, you've got the Coojoo World Cup, you've got new characters, you've got so many things that are so different. And I personally find that almost – I've never found this with every other Harry Potter book, but almost everything you read – I've said this time and time again – almost everything you read in the whole Goblet of Fire story – is somehow it's important either later on or earlier in the story.

6:27 Everything, almost everything you read is somehow linked to everything else in the book, if that makes sense. It's remarkable. I don't know how J.K. Rowling's done it. but he's never done it before or since. It's the one book I find. Are you sure? Because I think the Prisoner of Azkaban has that with a time turner. That's one. I think that those two, I agree with you about the Goblet of Fire, but I think the Prisoner of Azkaban is a master character. you know, mastering the whole idea of running a plot twice. That's really hard. So, but anyway, I take your bigger point.

7:08 Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I've never thought about that, actually. Yeah, I've never thought about that time, too. But that's it. Yeah, okay, next time I reread that, I'll be a bit more on the lookout for that in the Prisoner of Azkaban. But yeah, so the Goblet of Fire is 100% because everything's so different and linked. It's definitely my favorite. The movie was, I felt it was a bit rushed. It was very rushed. I thought there was a lot of stuff they left out. If any, apart from The Seventh, apart from The Deathly Hallows, if any movie had to be split into two, it was definitely The Gobbler of Fire.

7:49 But anyway, that's my opinion. We're not talking about the movies. But yeah, that's how I feel about The Gobbler of Fire movie. And it's interesting where you say the Deathly Hallows wasn't your favorite movie. No, the Half-Blood Prince. Oh, sorry, Half-Blood Prince. Yeah, sorry, Half-Blood Prince. Yeah, I can see where there's not as much forward momentum. I definitely agree with that. I personally think it's my second favourite or the main series. And I guess the further you go back, that's just really interesting to me. But yeah, each to their own for sure.

8:30 I think for me, the issue is, so, I mean, this is a bit different from what they do as the audio, because I think they basically did a good job with what's on the page. But Rowling's taken the decision to do almost everything, almost everything from Harry's point of view. And also, in order to explain this, she's got two mechanisms. It's very Byzantine. She's got the Horcruxes, but she's also got, and then she adds hallows on top of that. So she's got a lot of, I've got to explain this crunchy element. And the way she chooses to do that in the Half-Blood Prince is to keep us following Dumbledore telling us, telling Harry via the pensieve what happened and then having almost like flashbacks, the equivalent of flashbacks.

9:25 That's because she's got this rule she's set about it having to go through Harry. There are other narratorial ways of achieving that. much more sort of economic. But she, by book, where is she, book six, she has obviously thought, well, I can't break my own rules. It's only, I think, like one or two scenes where you see a snake point of view scene. Yeah. But they're very, very rare. And sometimes they're explained by Harry Dream did, you know. But I think, so for me, that just weighs on the, the, the way it's told. And the other element that weighs on it in the half blood prince is Harry spends almost the entire book being annoyed and cross and distressed and depressed, which is understandable from what he's sort of going through.

10:18 Yeah. And people sort of whispering about him and all this kind of thing. But, um, It also feels, as a result, as a listener, it's a heavier listener. So I'm interested that it's your second favourite. What is it about the Half-Blood Prince in particular that you like? Is it the answers to the questions? I suppose that is one thing. Yeah, you're learning more about Voldemort and I guess, yeah, the... I just really enjoy that they're sort of deviating from the present in terms of what's going on in the school, which I enjoy, but then they go, oh, we're going to go right back to Voldemort's grandfather and go from there.

11:11 And it's just really intriguing to go, wow, we're going. way back and we're learning so much about Voldemort and his ancestors that is, yeah, just really enjoyable. And I wish they did more of that in the movies, but I guess we're going to see more of that in the TV show, hopefully. Yeah. And did you think the way they caught the... the pensive moments and those scenes within the audio version actually did justice to did you did you feel that added an extra element because i mean the thing about the audio is are we actually gaining anything extra or is it just yes another way of getting people to pay for harry potter To tell you the truth, I'd have to listen to it again.

11:58 But I'm sure there was sound. That's a cynical question of mine. Yes, yes. I guess for me, I mean, I would just point to things like sound effects and also the soundtrack, which builds as you go through. I think that that is giving a kind of aural atmosphere that you don't get in a straightforward reading on the sort of Stephen Fry type. Yeah, I'm sure there were sounds from what I remember when he went in and out of the pensive. And then of course, once you're in the pensive, you get the sounds of what the day or what the weather was doing. And then in inside the different rooms within the pensive, you definitely got that.

12:42 So that, yeah, that helped. That added a very good extra layer. And depending on what kind of headphones you've got, you also get the kind of stereo effect to give it the space. Yes. Yes. And interestingly, I ended up the first three, because I pre-ordered the audio books, so I listened to them as they came out. Yeah. So the first three I listened to on my Bluetooth speaker But then when The God of Fire came out, I thought, well, it's my favorite book out of the whole lot. So I'll listen to them with my, I did a combination of my Apple AirPods and my Bose 700 over-the-ear headphones.

13:35 And then I enjoyed it so much with, you know, the headphones. You could hear clearer some of the background sound effects like the fire and the... in their fireplaces and that sort of thing. Then I end up listening to the rest of them with headphones. And I don't normally do that with audiobooks, but I think, yeah, if I was to listen to them again, the full cast editions, I'd listen to all of them through headphones and I found that a much better experience. So I would recommend that to anyone listening to them, use headphones. Yeah. No, no, I agree. I think it's just like we're being told to go and see the Odyssey in IMAX or whatever. I think in these, because so much has gone into the sound design, in order to really judge them, you need to listen to them on a decent sound system to hear that sound design.

14:28 I mean, don't get me wrong, my Bluetooth speaker did a good job, but, yeah, headphones just broadened into a better, clearer experience, more immersive. I think that the performances were very good. They've got good young actors. I thought this older set did seem to gel very well with each other and you got this sort of sense of their friendship, they felt more modern as well. Yeah. Because obviously the film characters were from a while ago now, but there was a sort of element of, I don't know, Hermione was a bit less stuffy and a bit more cool.

15:16 Yeah. Yeah. Which I think is probably where you would go as a modern actress having another go at the role. So I enjoyed all of that. And I think that... The older actors, of course, are all top of their game actors, so that was good. But like you, I enjoyed having the space to be able to see the whole of the story. There are a couple of places where I've always wanted to edit. So for me, the camping section in the first half of Deathly Hallows does seem to take a long while. I know that she's trying to sort of convey an idea of how difficult it is for them and how they're on the run.

16:00 But because she doesn't allow herself to go away from Harry, when we know there's exciting things happening elsewhere, and we just get little glimpses of it through the resistance that they see in the distance, it does feel very claustrophobic and very stuck, which is how they are in the riddle they're trying to solve. So I've always heard that bit just goes on a bit too long. Yeah. I, um, got the things that stood out for me. In the Goblet of Fire forecast audio edition, Voldemort says, Avada Kedavra, before he kills Frank Bryce. Okay. And that, um, in the straight reading that Stephen Fry does, for instance, you don't hear that because the way it's written, you don't know what the spell is used because Frank's screaming.

16:48 Um... because he sees Voldemort as he is. And I thought that the fact that in the full cast audio edition they had Voldemort say Avada Kedavra, even though if you're a first-time reader, you wouldn't know what that meant. I just thought it was really immersive and world-building and added a sinister layer. Yeah. If that makes sense. Yeah. And, of course, they're doing these full cast versions after we know the full story arc. Yeah. Yes. I was talking about this recently on the pod because David Heyman, the producer of the films, who's involved the series, he made the very good point that when they made the films, they didn't know if Snape was a baddie or not.

17:35 They didn't know. They didn't know. That's true. So when you cast now, you know, oh, well, you know, Delores Umbridge is this kind of person and you know that Snape is this kind of person. So it changes your relationship. You know, who's marked for death as well. You know, it is, we are, we've lost our first time round family. innocence yeah like that um so we won't matter if they say now abada kedavra because we all know that's the spell because lo and behold um mad eye moody sort of turns up and teaches all these things so yeah i think it is it was very interesting to think about how our relationship changes once we actually know yeah oh absolutely yeah And I love how they've cast Kit Harington as Lockhart in the TV show.

18:35 Oh, that's one of the wonderful gains, isn't it? That you get to see him in the hospital and you get to see the backstory of Neville at the same time. Things that were cut for obviously filmic purposes now get treatment. And I've always thought that was a really interesting bookend to that story. Yeah. And it's like, wow, we've seen him in the audio books. And now we're going to, for those of us that have listened to them, we get to see him again in the TV show. It's going to be great. Yeah, because he's one of the transfers, isn't he?

19:16 As is Arabella Stanton. Arabella Stanton was the young Hermione and she has been cast as the... the series Hermione. Yes. Which is very exciting for her, but she must know this material so well by now. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So let's sort of do our overview. Now we've seen the whole full cast put together. I know from directors that I know vaguely or have people who know, there's a lot of directors now being brought in by Audible to direct classics and other works.

19:59 We're seeing more and more of this. Oh, I mean, that's interesting. I think that for me, Harry Potter works really well like this because there is so much dialogue and the narrator's voice is very warm. So I think it is a real success. So I think it was a good one to do. I'd be interesting to see if I feel the same about some other more tricky to... tricky to sort of imagine books. Like, for example, if they did Lord of the Rings, ever, as a full cast. I mean, Andy Serkis has a great job being everybody. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But would it work as well?

20:41 I think we'd, well, personally, I think I can speak for both of us when I think if they did the Lord of the Rings, that would be almost a... Well, yes, I would love it. I love listening to it being read, but also just to have another way of imagining it. And of course, the lovely thing about these audio versions is that because they do the stuff that the films didn't touch, you're able to imagine it without anything else. You can bring your own... You bring yourself to the party. You're not just a passive listener.

21:22 You're actively imagining what's going on, which I think is really fun. Yeah, absolutely. So, Andrew, would we give this a sort of thumbs up? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The whole series, you mean? We're talking about the full cast audio, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, absolutely, thumbs up. I think it's a must listen, yeah, I'd give it a standalone, I'd give it a five out of five. Oh, well, that's pretty good, isn't it? Yeah, I think… I think you're right. If we're thinking about performance, you know, you may be little dips along the way in which book you prefer more than other, that kind of thing.

22:08 But in terms of performance and casting and design, particularly the one we were talking about, that sound design, I think it is streets ahead of other things like this that I've listened to, which obviously don't have such a big budget behind them. So, yeah. The fact... The fact that they've gone, oh, okay, now we're in the common room, what are the acoustics of that versus, you know, a certain classroom, what are the acoustics, what are the pop fan sounds? It's incredible what they've done. Yeah, definitely. So thank you, Andrew. Thank you for talking this through with me. I know that you're a Potter fan, more so than me, actually, I would say.

22:52 For me, Harry Potter is very much bound up with raising my children. And that's what I think about that moment in the 2000s of reading it to them. So that's where a lot of my fondness for it stems from. Are you anticipating the TV series? Will you be following that when it comes out at Christmas? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm really keen for it, especially some of the things from what I've seen in the trailer where they – it'd be interesting some of the angles they take where in the trailer there was a scene where we see – Petunia from memory, from what I've had it described, we see Aunt Petunia cutting Harry's hair.

23:37 Yeah, that's right. Obviously, we remember she hated it and she was like, oh, you know, there's nothing special about you. We hate you, basically. And I was like, wow, that's not touched upon in the books itself. But the fact that they've sort of done that for the TV show adds an extra darker yet realistic element to the whole thing. Because it's like, well, yeah, you can absolutely imagine Petunia doing that to poor Harry as a kid. Yeah. And like, you know, I've, yeah, I basically grew up with Harry Potter as it was coming out. So I think I was eight when I first got the Philosopher's Stone read by Stephen Fry on audio.

24:20 And they said, oh, yeah. I think it was through the ABC shop here in Australia, and they, you know, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. And they said, oh, I'd have to ask my mum for the specifics, but anyway, somehow we got it given to us by the ABC shop and they said, if you can, you know, write a review of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, you can keep this copy. Oh, wow. So I did that. some help. And that's how I kept that copy, which I still have. And then ever since, Dad would read me the print versions of the other books, and then I'd get the, when they came out, and then I'd get the audio copy for Christmas. Yeah, because there was a time lag, wasn't there, between the two.

25:02 Yes. And then with The Deathly Hallows, Dad read me up to chapter 20, and then I'd And then I borrowed the audio copy from Vision Australia because they just happened to have, I mean, because obviously it was, everyone wanted it. They happened to have copies you could borrow. So I borrowed it from Vision Australia and finished from Chapter 21 onwards in, I think I started in a Saturday, I think I started at around 1 p.m., and finished at like 2 or 3 a.m. Sunday mornings. I bet your dad was cross because he was trying to read you the story and you had to finish it on his own.

25:43 Yeah, I told him I got it. And then when I got my own copy of The Deathly Hallows for Christmas read by Stephen Fry on CD, I let him borrow the CD so he could listen to it in his truck and he finished it then. Yeah. Yeah, we were a family who had to have two copies because, you know, it was just everybody wanted to read it. There were three children plus two adults. And there was one fateful day when both copies were with one parent who wasn't me and there was a flood so they couldn't get back from grandparents. And I was so cross because me and the child at home couldn't find out.

26:27 My husband would say, I'll read it down the phone. Yeah. A book that you do that with where you're so keen is a sign of a book that's really grabbed hold of you. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Andrew. And thank you for joining us on this. And we look forward to hearing your views on the series when that comes out, which I think will be Christmas and into the new year. So we'll check back in with you then. Oh, no worries. No worries. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And thank you, everyone, for listening. Thanks for listening to Myth Makers Podcast.

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