Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell: The Dark Tower

So for some reason I was under the impression this miniseries would be ten parts long; which meant I was a little confused to find we had arrived in Venice so quickly. In my mind, Venice occurs at the very end of the book, and there didn't seem to be enough material left to cover four more episodes. Then I looked up the show on Wikipedia and discovered there are only seven episodes, which means next week is the finale!

Whew, talk about whiplash. All of my current shows are ending within a few weeks of each other!

Okay, I don't have a lot to say about this one. I really enjoy the book chapters set in Venice (infinitely more than those that take place during the Napoleonic War) but as is to be expected, some of the finer nuances are lost in translation.

No Lord Byron. No Aunt Greysteel. No pineapples!

We find Jonathan Strange trying in vain to make himself mad so that he might see as well as summon a fairy spirit. Aside from the painful stereotype of the gesticulating Italian man doing business by yelling loudly from a high window, the city is captured nicely – and makes a refreshing change from London and the English countryside.

Non book-readers are likely to be utterly baffled by the introduction to the Greysteels and the old lady of Cannaregio, though admittedly it would have been impossible to follow the book in this respect – they're first mentioned in a series of letters sent by Jonathan.

You might recognize Doctor Greysteel as Clive Mantle, recently seen in Sherlock as the villain of The Hounds of Baskerville, but for slightly older viewers, he's perhaps better known as Little John in Robin of Sherwood. His daughter Flora is just how I pictured this young lady, who I loved in the book as a sort of mini-Arabella and admirer of Jonathan, though they've re-characterized her as more of an airhead whose father has recently rescued her from running off with Lord Bryon (huh?)

Great casting though.

It's a shame we have to cut back on the mild flirtation that existed between Jonathan and Flora, as there was something deeply poignant in their growing fondness for each other before Jonathan discovers the truth about his wife and Flora's subsequent decision to ... well, we'll talk about it next week. The good thing about her role in this story is that however young and immature the writing/actress makes her, she can't help but come across as heroic.

Jonathan finds the answer to madness with Mrs Delgado, an old woman who is more cat than human, though the contraction of the source material means that we lose the wonderful irony of Strange attaining madness, but being too out of his mind to remember what he wants to do with the fairy once he summons him.

However, the changes work despite Jonathan's mental clarity, particularly the Gentleman carefully skirting the issue of bringing Arabella back from the dead (knowing full-well that she's still alive) only to fall into the trap of referencing Lady Pole ("she was a different matter entirely") and thus giving away the fact he was involved with her resurrection. Likewise, book!Jonathan enters Faerie quite by accident while in the grip of insanity, having gained possession of the snuffbox with Lady Pole's finger inside, but having no idea what it means.

I'll admit it works a bit more effectively in the adaptation, with Jonathan still bewildered as to the meaning of the finger, but using it to trace its origins and naturally being led straight to Lady Pole – and by proxy, his wife. It makes his discovery of Lost Hope seems less like a coincidence.

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Not to sound like a broken record with my constant refrain of "in the book", but this adaptation has not been particularly subtle in its use of magic and special effects; a far cry from the simplistic but still eerie quality of the supernatural that Clarke depicts. I can understand the need to make things more "showy" for a visual medium, but it went way over-the-top in their depiction of the Dark Tower.

The "dark tower" that Jonathan is cursed with is meant to look like a pillar of darkness, NOT a hurricane in the middle of Venice! For heaven's sake, why do you think it was called the dark tower in the first place? Because at first glance that's what it looked like. What we see here should have logically been called the dark storm or the dark hurricane.

Not a tower.

Likewise is the dramatic disappearance of Jonathan Strange's books (complete with loud pops and green smoke) instead of the words silently disappearing on the pages, or the Greysteeles witnessing Mrs Delgado eating a dead bird instead of it being insinuated when the old lady springs out of her chair to meet a cat coming through the window with a bird in its mouth. 

Yes, visual medium and all that – but what can I say? I prefer the subtlety of the book.

Miscellaneous Observations:

They embossed the iconic raven symbol on the cover of Strange's book! Nice touch.

The mystery of Vinculus's book is introduced and resolved in the space of a single scene. Facepalm. At least they managed to get in Stephen's wonderful monologue about what the colour of his skin means for him: "My skin means that any man may strike me in a public place and never fear the consequence."

(Not that they've really depicted this racial tension in any way; the book had a memorable encounter with a carriage driver who kept asking him what special kind of food he ate, and an earlier scene portrays Stephen bumping into a gentleman and realizing in horror that he's startled him – knowing that such a reaction can only end badly for him).

The Fridge Horror of what Lady Pole and Stephen are enduring only occurred to me in this episode, when Stephen wakes from Lost Hope to find himself beside a lake with Vinculus. These two are never unconscious. They're either awake in the real world or lucid dreaming in Faerie. Their minds never get to sleep. *shudder*

I'm not fond of the implication that Norrell was RIGHT about Jonathan not meddling in these powers – not because it isn't true, but because everyone seems to have forgotten that he's the one who did it first. Let's not lose sight of the fact that he's a total hypocrite.

The place Vinculus leads Stephen to is the place Childermass saw after he was shot – interesting.

I had to laugh at the Gentleman's disdainful line: "Englishmen and their books." It sounded a lot like Magneto's disgusted line back in the first X-Men movie: "you homo sapiens and your guns."