I sort of loved it, despite its flaws. The main cast are uncannily fit for their roles, and the supporting cast are excellent. Every new character that appears on screen seems to knock it out the park. Roger, Tony and Ma are proper acting.
The daemons are bloody great. I don't mind that you can sometimes see the CGI joins because the way they move and emote and act, makes them come to life as believable characters. Stelmaria and Mrs Coulter's monkey were a joy. Pan morphing was neat too.
It zips along, possibly too fast(?) if you're not familiar with the plot. A lot of the relationships have to be implied rather than demonstrated, but that's TV for you I suppose. There wasn't enough Pan-Lyra stuff - I could have watched a whole episode of that relationship. But again I'm sure that has something to do with the effects workload. Most of the little problems can probably be attributed to production limitations, technical and time wise.
Something like Game of Thrones looks better in terms of being slicker with more elaborate sets and expensive effects, but this show already looks better in terms of coherent visual storytelling. I thought the internals were lit and shot beautifully.
I have no problem with the BBC drama aesthetic . It can look cheap and tacky but it doesn't have to. The Little Drummer Girl and Gunpowder both looked stunning and unique despite clearly being British television productions. I'm so over everything needing to look glossy and cinematic. I'd much rather have something that looks visually interesting made within the shooting limitations.
I'm not a massive Pullman fan though, I tend to pick and choose the bits that I like, so this type of retelling might be more suited to a casual like me, rather than the book die hards.