Review of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Love so much about this series. (There is no plot spoiler in this and I only clicked on spoiler alert because my views may put off anyone who has not watched all episodes broadcast on BBC so far. This series is so beautifully designed, acted, costumed, directed and CGI'd that I have not the superlatives these aspects deserve with which to shower it. The novelist can't be praised highly enough. I did not read the book first but have watched this enthralling series. It is dark, but fun too. History buff that I am, this is saturated with historical atmosphere and has such a superb grasp of history while knowing that it cannot even attempt to be factually correct, for this is art. It is artful art. Both magicians are superb. Those settings - I am drawn into the turn of the 19th century. I also watched Bertie Carvel in Babylon (so good), and the hugely talented actor who plays Norrell was excellent in both Little Dorrit and Tyrannosaur. Whole thing is dotted with wonderful characters -like Dickens is from the Tarot reading Pedlar to the magician's circle, the puffed up charlatan, and so on. Wonderful cameos everywhere. I spurn the religious conservationists who must actually believe in magic hokum to object to it. I suppose they would object to Hans Christian Anderson -elements of which fairy tale sensibility are I feel palpable here : The Raven King/ hobgoblin types, the character who must be the man with thistledown hair that is referred to in another review. Everything is here, a melting pot of imaginative magical genres. This exposition of magic surpasses Merlinesque/Potteresque magic as it must, for it is sophisticated adult entertainment. It also avoids the clichés of Merlinesque symbolism. This is a Gothic fantasy, a dream state magical dance with send up horror. (Dead souls brought to life, so touches of Frankenstein, a creation in tune with the period, but Dracula too (a later creation). The Peninsula campaign scenes are done well too. So bold to bring the Napoleonic war into this. Good, and good BUT - from episode three onward, for me it has begun to lose shape. Something to do with the complexity, the script and editing perhaps? Some of the ideas it has to be said which are lurking there, possibly in the original novel, are not fully formed. Began to lose direction by episode three. Still, I will stay with it because it is fantastically well done BBC.