HOGFATHER

Welcome to the Discworld, a parallel universe drifting through space perched on top of four elephants standing on the shell of a giant turtle, the Great A’Tuin. Here, reality is stretched to its limit, but it’s still populated by humans, just like you and me. Almost.

In Discworld, it’s the night before Hogswatch. You know, that special night when the Hogfather delivers presents to the kiddies at the Hogswatch mid-winter festival in the medieval melting pot of Ankh-Morpork. What the Hogfather doesn’t realize is that he’s being watched by the Auditors—the Discworld’s grey-robed specters who audit not money but the entire universe and maintain the neat order of things. They think human beings are ridiculous; that they are ruining the perfect universe with their willful fantasies—fantasies that make humans, well… human. Now they’ve formulated a plan to destroy human belief so that there’s not an atom of it left and the Discworld can finally be theirs.

They approach Lord Downey (David Warner, The Omen) the Head of The Assassins’ Guild with a proposal: enlist the ruthless Mr. Teatime (Marc Warren, Hustle) to kill the Hogfather. A dire situation indeed when the Hogfather disappears, because if the presents aren’t delivered, all hope will be lost, and the sun will never rise again. While Death (voice of Ian Richardson, Bleak House), is summoned to fill the fat man’s shoes, a further plan to outwit the Auditors is underway. But who can stop them? Death’s adopted granddaughter and mild-mannered governess Susan Sto-Helit (Michelle Dockery, Fingersmith)? Mustrum Ridcully (Joss Ackland, Asylum), Head of the Unseen University? Ridcully’s motley band of wizards? Hex, the thinking engine? Someone had better act fast, or the Auditors’ terrible vision for a hopeless world will become a dismal reality and could spell out the end of humanity as we know it.

Weaving together pagan myths, druid worship, winter solstice rites, childhood bogeymen, fanciful dreams, and incredible nightmares, Hogfather is like nothing else ever imagined. By turns hilarious and horrifying, magical and menacing, wicked and witty, it’ll restore your faith in the power of invention.