• Mood: relaxed
• Music: Marissa Nadler: Rachel

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

I was really excited to hear the book had been made into a TV series, although in practice I don't actually have time to watch TV series. But anyway, we had a couple of hours between social events on Saturday, so I sat down with jack to watch an episode. Which in fact ended up being the second episode as we'd somehow failed to record The friends of English Magic, but having read the book, watching the title sequence was enough to make How is Lady Pole? comprehensible.

Basically the episode was pretty much what I wanted from an adaptation of the book. Pretty BBC costume drama, well acted, telling Clarke's story without being slavish about it. It's ten years since I read the novel and I don't remember the details that well, though the emotional impressions have stayed with me; this probably makes me a good audience for the show since I'm not going to be offended by what they've abridged to fit the very long novel into seven hour-long episodes.

Some people have complained that the colour palette is too dark, but I didn't find that bothered me. I found the fairy magic really impressively spooky and other-worldly, and Marc Warren is particularly good as the Gentleman. I don't know if I'll ever get round to watching the rest, but in theory I'd like to. And perhaps I should take this as a cue to reread the book, it has a lot going on and the fact I don't really remember it well means I might enjoy a reread.

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