Dafne Keen and Lin-Manuel Miranda join His Dark Materials

There's been whispers and rumours about the possible adaptation of Philip Pullman's novels since 2015. At points, we feared that the show wouldn't make it to our screens at all, and that Pullman fans would have to be satisfied with last year's release of La Belle Sauvage – the latest book in the Dark Materials' world – for their fix.

Until this week, all we knew was that the writer behind Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Jack Thorne, confirmed he was working on – and perfecting – the project last year. The taps have finally been opened. Here's what you need to know:

Finally it has been announced that The King’s Speech director Tom Hooper will be working on the eight-part series alongside Dafne Keen (child star of Logan) and – incredibly – Hamilton‘s Lin-Manuel Miranda.

The series will travel through all three of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials books – Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass – with Dafne Keen as Lyra and Lin-Manuel Miranda as the charming adventurer Lee Scoresby.

The books feature a coming of age story that follows Lyra Belacqua and then Will Parry in the last two books, as they travel through various parallel universes. The trilogy is in part a retelling and inversion of John Milton's Paradise Lost and a comment and celebration of humanity for the original sin. But don't let that put you off – this is a subtle and mesmerising collection of children's stories featuring armoured polar bears, witches, philosophy, physics and love

Hopefully, the BBC will have learnt lessons from the 2007 film The Golden Compass, which received bad reviews from critics. With a bit of luck, His Dark Materials will be among the best TV this year.