Oh. My. God.

Let me ask you a question. Do you like comedies of manners? Do you like the kind of light, bone-dry humour that goes into constructing exquisitely awkward moments? Of course you do. Are you also enamoured of magic, of real magic, magic that is mystical and weird and steeped in ritual and half-forgotten words scavenged from books of lore? Wanna put 'em in a blender and see whatcha get?

The answer, normally, would be "Of course not. How would that even work?"

Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell is how. And how.

The book is wonderful, if the kind of doorstop that makes War And Peace look like a kebab shop leaflet. The TV adaptation? It is a revelation. It feels creepy and weird and, Iunno, off somehow, especially when magic starts happening. Eddie Marsan is a brilliant, underrated actor who is wonderful as Gilbert Norrell, a man plagued by indecision and who really only wants to be left alone. Marc Warren's in it in a cool suit and is super hot. The magic feels otherworldly, which it should. The references to the Raven King feel genuinely ominous. And above all, when it has the need to be, it is funny as all hell.

Another winner from the Beeb. Fellow Brits, check it out. Americans, check it out with a parrot on your shoulder. It deserves to be watched, and you deserve to watch it.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

<i>The rain made a door for me, and I stepped through it,
The stones made a throne for me, and I sat upon it...
The rain will make a door for me, and I will pass through it,
The stones will make a throne for me, and I will sit upon it.</i>

Okay, now that's another way statues can be really, really creepy...

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

However, this post is really about the way the DCF subject-length restriction clipped the subject line on the original post, and how my immediate thought was that this must have been before No finished his Ph.D.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!

On a related note, BBC is also working on/has starting airing overseas an adaptation of the Rivers of London series, which begins with the novel 'Midnight Riot' by Ben Aaronovitch. I'm really stoked about this one; modern day British police procedural meets old school magic.

Brian