I was shelving returns at the library last Tuesday - late shift, nobody in the building but me and the fluorescent lights doing that thing where they hum just slightly off-key - when Granny Weatherwax first opened her mouth through my earbuds and I actually stopped mid-reach with a copy of Where the Crawdads Sing hovering over the shelf. Because Indira Varma didn't just voice Granny Weatherwax. She became her. That iron-spine-wrapped-in-a-pointy-hat energy that Pratchett wrote so perfectly? Varma found it, grabbed it, and refused to let go for seven and a half hours.
Look, I know what you're thinking. Jordan, this is Discworld. This is comedy fantasy. This is not your horror wheelhouse. And you'd be right - except Pratchett understood something that most horror writers struggle with: dread doesn't require monsters. Sometimes it just requires a world that refuses to take a little girl seriously. Equal Rites is about Eskarina Smith inheriting wizard power in a world that insists wizards are men, and the slow creeping wrongness of a system designed to crush someone who doesn't fit - that's horror adjacent enough for me. That same suffocating institutional dread is exactly what Margaret Atwood weaponizes in Testaments — different world, same bone-deep anger at systems that decide who gets to hold power before you're even born.
Varma Channels Weatherwax Like She Was Born on the Disc
Here's what surprised me. I came into this expecting Bill Nighy to steal the show with the footnotes - because it's Bill Nighy, and Pratchett's footnotes are half the genius of any Discworld novel. But Varma is the spine of this production and she knows it. Her Granny Weatherwax has this clipped, no-nonsense Lancre cadence that somehow conveys decades of stubbornness and secret tenderness in a single sentence. When Granny dismisses something as foolish, Varma drops her pitch just slightly, just enough to make you feel like you've personally disappointed her. It's genuinely intimidating.
And then she pivots to young Esk - curious, frustrated, powerful in ways she can't control - and the voice shifts entirely. Not just pitch, but rhythm. Esk stumbles over her own certainty. Granny never stumbles over anything. That distinction? That's craft.
Peter Serafinowicz as Death is... interesting. I know some Discworld diehards want Death to sound like a granite slab, all CAPITALS and cosmic weight. Serafinowicz plays it more cultured, more wry - almost amused by mortality rather than embodying it. It took me a chapter or two to adjust, but honestly? It works for Equal Rites specifically, where Death's appearances are brief and more comedic than existential. He's not doing the heavy dramatic lifting here. He's doing punchlines. And he lands them.
The Nighy Problem (Which Isn't Really a Problem)
Okay, let's talk about Bill Nighy reading the footnotes. Early on - and I mean the first twenty minutes or so - there's a quality to his delivery that I can only describe as "man who just woke up from a very good nap and isn't entirely sure where he is." It's laconic bordering on sedated. I almost paused to check if he'd been directed to sound that way or if he was just... Bill Nighy-ing.
But here's the thing. It grew on me. By the midpoint, his half-awake bemusement started to feel intentional - like the footnotes are Pratchett whispering asides to you at a dinner party, slightly wine-drunk, one eyebrow raised. Once I stopped expecting energy and started expecting intimacy, it clicked. Is it for everyone? No. Some people want their Pratchett footnotes delivered with sparkle and verve. Nighy gives you a conspiratorial murmur instead. I ended up loving it, but I understand the complaint.
The broomstick scene with Esk and Granny - Varma brings this alive with genuine momentum. You can feel the wind. You can feel Granny's disapproval of the wind. It's one of those moments where narration transforms a decent scene into a memorable one.
Who Should Ride This Broomstick (and Who Should Stay Grounded)
If you're a Discworld newcomer, this is a solid entry point - Pratchett's voice is already sharpening here compared to Colour of Magic, and the feminist anger underneath the comedy gives it real teeth. If you're a longtime fan who's listened to Nigel Planer or Colin Morgan's versions, you might bristle at first. Different doesn't mean worse, but it does mean adjustment.
Skip this if you need wall-to-wall action or if laconic footnote delivery will actively annoy you. Lean in if you want a seven-hour listen that's funny, surprisingly pointed about gender and power, and performed by someone (Varma) who clearly understands that Granny Weatherwax is one of the great characters in English fantasy.
At 7 hours 28 minutes, it's a perfect weekend listen. I finished mine during a rainy Saturday morning with Shirley (my cat) asleep on my chest, and honestly? It felt exactly right. Warm, sharp, a little bit angry at the world. Shirley was unimpressed. I was charmed.
The Staff Gets Passed - Catch It
This production respects Pratchett's text. That sounds simple but it's rare. The three-narrator approach could've been gimmicky - instead it creates texture. Varma carries the story, Nighy annotates it, Serafinowicz punctuates it with capital-letter mortality. My podcast listeners are going to love this, especially the ones who keep asking me when I'll finally cover Pratchett's scarier moments. (The Things from the Dungeon Dimensions in this book? Actually unsettling. Pratchett knew what he was doing with cosmic horror even when he was being funny about it.)
Shirley Jackson walked so Granny Weatherwax could fly. On a broomstick. Badly.
