Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Episode 7: Recap and Review
It is, as Sir Walter Pole puts it, "a species of revolution". No wonder the men are all swarthy with Mozartily-dishevelled hair. There are no mirrors so they can't see what they look like.
The women, however, remain gorgeous – even sleeping beauty Lady Pole, who has been bed-ridden for days. No drool, smeared make-up or bird's nest hair here, yet as Segundus and Honeyfoot tried to wake her I genuinely felt fear. They've worked out that she's under an enchantment and not actually mad, but don't they know they must never wake a sleeping woman?
Even if she is lucky enough to have Childermass at her bedside. Windswept and swarthy before the mirrors were broken, he can't stay long as he has to find Vinculus. Hooray! You can never have too much Childermass wondering around a moory landscape.
Childermass is also sought after, by Drawlight. After his stint in prison, and having returned – minus wig – from a traumatic time in Venice, Drawlight is now a pitiable figure, a shadow of his former self, with messages for Childermass from Strange, and Lady Pole's finger in a box.
How did he get that one through customs? Running into vile, clean-shaven fop Lascelles, who bullies him into giving him the gossip, Drawlight runs off with the box as Lascelles takes aim, successfully, through the trees. No longer neither narrative use nor ornament, poor Drawlight (the excellent Vincent Franklin, seen recently in Cucumber and unrecognisable here as the disgraced socialite) has met a nasty end, and Lascelles' dramatic motivation for murdering him is clear.
"Do you honestly believe I would allow you to destroy Norrell, which is to say, destroy me?" Lascelles' destiny is tied up with the magician's. Only Childermass, tarot master, budding magician and ex-pickpocket, has a laser to the truth. Slapping his cards on the table Childermass knows Lascelles is retaining the box, and lying about where Drawlight is.
Which causes Lascelles to get a bit scrappy with a knife. Emerging from the scuffle with the box, Childermass now has a Poldarkesque facial wound. "Traitor," hisses Lascelles. "Johannite."
There are worse things to be called. "If I were you , Mr Lascelles," says ever-gracious Childermass, "I would speak more guardedly. You're in the north now. Our laws were made by the Raven King. Our towns and abbeys were founded by him. Mr Norrell's house was built by him. He's in our minds and hearts and speech. And he's coming back."
You tell 'im, Childermass! Metaphorical cheers all round. This Johannite stuff is rousing. I'm surprised even Norrell doesn't turn.
Fat chance. And so to the rising action. Tousle-haired, unshaven and mad-eyed, Strange is now back from Venice, aware that it was Norrell who unleashed faerie magick upon England when he sold Lady Pole to the Gentleman. Still desperate to find his wife, Strange remains tainted with the Gentleman's black tower curse.
"What did you expect?" says Norrell. "Opening the pathways to other lands, breaking everyone's mirrors? Disreputable magic, sir!" Oh, the ironing.
The scene in the library gets a bit too Harry Potter for my liking, what with the fireballs and Norrell's sorry attempt to conjure rain, like a child blowing too hard on a birthday cake. As the action oscillates between the library at Hurtfew, Starecross asylum and Lost Hope, newly-reconciled Strange and Norrell have their work cut out attempting to summon the Raven King, kill the Gentleman, and reunite Strange with his wife.
It's anyone's guess if they'll make it. Lascelles' death – he is crushed to powder by the Gentleman in revenge for killing Stephen – is a fist in the air moment. And in a delicious twist Stephen realises that his death does not apply in faerie land, and that it is the Gentleman he must kill and replace as king of Lost Hope. With the Gentleman gone, Arabella is finally rescued from Lost Hope and transported through a mirror to Venice.
Through it all we see flying ears, the return of Honeyfoot's walnut-loaded gun, and Norrell's wig taking on a life of its own.
And the Raven King? Perhaps this was the episode's one disappointment. After all the build-up, the cursory glimpses of John Uskglass reveal him to be not so much Childermass de luxe, as I'd been hoping, as sixth-form emo-goth who's lost his way on the moors en route to the local bus stop.
Which hair conditioner does he use? I want some. And what is that he puts in Vinculus' mouth during the scene in the ravine? I dunno, and he doesn't hang around to explain (presumably he has a bus to catch).
And Childermass still doesn't make it back in time before Strange and Norrell disappear in the black tower, forever trapped in the Raven King's spell. "Where have they gone, Mr Childermass?" asks Segundus. "Mr Strange and Mr Norrell?"
"I do not know," says Childermass, who has the last word. "Wherever magicians used to go, perhaps. Beyond the sky, or the other side of the rain."
It is now up to the York Society of Gentleman Magicians to decipher the Raven King's text, tattooed upon Vinculus' body, and discover Strange and Norrell's fate.
Condensing a tome into seven episodes, this exquisitely tangled adaptation packed a lot in while avoiding clichés. The same goes for the actors, who are excellent without exception. Marc Warren plays it super-cool as psychopathic faerie Thistledown (no mean feat – I still get the chills when I think of his expression behind the door in episode 4). Eddie Marsan as Norrell has the perfect profile for one of those antique miniature silhouettes, while Enzo Cilenti as Childermass re-invigorates the image of the romantic moor-wondering hero. He is as obvious a choice for the Raven King as Bertie Carvel is for the next Dr Who.
Tapping in to ancient fairytale archetypes evoking a convincing alternative mythology of England, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is a visually rich and dramatically satisfying viewing experience that deserves to live on. Pretty much like Strange and Norrell themselves, twinkling like stars up in the sky.
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