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.
