TV Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

Let’s not pull any punches, right from the start, and I will say that Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (2004) is my favorite book of the young century. More than that, it is, to my judgment, one of the best books of the century (competing with Roberto Bolano’s 2666 as the great 21^st century novel). Anyone who knows me knows that these are two distinct judgments. I re-read the book every couple of years (I’d do it more often if it weren’t 900 pages long) in order to be sure that my estimation is not the product of youthful nostalgia, and for eleven years I have been waiting for two things: a sequel and an adaptation. One of those waits is now over.

This Saturday night on BBC America the first episode of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell aired, and was triumphant television. As with Game of Thrones, another fantasy adapted from voluminous source material, there was simply no way that the story in Strange could be condensed into a movie, or even into a Peter Jackson-esque trio of films. There is too much there there. The novel has world like Scrooge McDuck has gold coins, and while the special effects in the theater would have been even more tremendous to look at, I doubt that a movie screen could have captured the vast breadth of the source material. As a television program, however, the adapters seem to have accomplished just that.

In the lead roles Bertie Carvel (as Strange) and Eddie Marsan (as Norrell) are extremely well cast, particularly Marsan—one of those actors whose face is familiar to everyone, though no one remembers where they have seen him before—who is in a two way tie with Timothy Spall (as J.M.W. Turner) in Mr. Turner as the finest choice of unlikely leading man in this age of the world.

The production design is immaculate, the score is fresh and understated, the supporting roles seem to be well thought through (though, as yet, there has not been enough screen time for many of the roles that will become important to say for certain whether they are as well cast as they seem, Enzo Cilenti as Childermass, for instance, was a startling choice but acquits himself well in the first episode).  All that’s left now is for Susanna Clarke to finish the sequel.

Watch it if:

You are a fan of the fantasy of manners genre.

You enjoy precisely produced British television.

You secretly harbor ambitions of sorcery.

You are the Raven King's subject.

Don't watch it if:

You hate whimsy.