THE WATCH’S RICHARD DORMER ON HIS NEW SHOW AND THE DEATH OF HIS GAME OF THRONES CHARACTER

The Watch star Richard Dormer grew up reading the work of author Terry Pratchett, whose Discworld books form the basis for the series. Although, as he told Rotten Tomatoes during a recent interview, his regular diet was interrupted, ironically enough, just after the first City Watch novel, Guards! Guards!, was released.

“I went to drama school, I was about 17, and I gave the book to a classmate and I never got to find out about Sam Vimes,” he said.

Now 30-odd years later, Dormer stars as Vimes in the BBC America program.

The premise sees Vimes as the captain of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, a police force in a city where organized crimes guilds are more-or-less legalized. The toothlessness of the Watch leaves Vimes plenty of time to drink while his subordinates — werewolf Angua (Marama Corlett), female-presenting dwarf Cheery (Joe Eaton-Kent), and troll Detritus (Ralph Ineson) — wrangle loose chickens and other small-time miscreants not licensed to commit crime. As the series begins, new recruit Carrot (Adam Hugill) arrives with a very different impression of the Watch’s purpose, while the sudden appearance of a dragon in Ankh-Morpork forces Sam to be a lawman once again.

And if that wasn’t enough trouble for the Watch Captain, “a ghost from Sam Vimes’ past turns up and pulls the world out from underneath him,” Dormer added. It’s the loose threads of Guards! Guards! with various characters (and character names) from later novels subbed in as the show takes great pains to remind viewers it’s not directly based on any one novel. Sadly for readers, this means Nobby Nobbs will be waiting in the wings a little longer, but Death (voiced by Wendell Pierce) will make a few appearances in the sprawling city.