This Underrated British Miniseries Is the Best Fantasy TV Show

The Big Picture

• Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is an underrated fantasy series with a unique approach to magic and a captivating story.
• Set in the Regency era, the show explores the intersection of magic and science in a world where magic is treated as a serious field of study.
• The series delves into themes of friendship, love, ambition, and the limits of human knowledge, making it a must-watch for fantasy enthusiasts.

The history of fantasy on television is a pretty rich one, especially in the post-2000, peak TV landscape. Fans of the genre have a swath of options when it comes to picking their favorites, from high fantasy classics such as Game of Thrones or The Wheel of Time to urban enterprises usually aimed at younger audiences, like Shadowhunters and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. There are even some examples right there in the middle, such as the prematurely canceled Shadow and Bone. The point is that there is no scarcity of magical storytelling and amazing worldbuilding to choose from. However, there is a fantasy show that rarely makes the lists of best of the genre, even though it is a beautiful series with a unique approach to fantastical elements. We are talking about the 2015 British miniseries Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

Written by Peter Harness and directed by Toby Haynes, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is a fantastic seven-episode-long miniseries based on the book of the same name by Susanna Clarke – a more than 700 pages long novel that mixes up the British Regency and the Napoleonic wars with prophecies, fairies, and a sudden resurgence of magic. With beautiful costumes and set designs that only the BBC can provide, as well as incredible performances and a story unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, the show had everything to become one of the most beloved fantasy stories in our Earthly realm. Sadly, though, it hardly made any ripples outside the UK, where it was recognized by the British Film Institute as one of the most important programs of 2015.

But Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell definitely deserves a lot more recognition than it gets. Not only is it unique in how it approaches its magical universe — a universe that is entirely our own, though not in the way that we are used to seeing it — and a beautiful show of craftsmanship, it also delivers a well-thought-out story and remarkable characters. A single watch is enough to get anyone obsessed with its universe, and, quite frankly, rushing to the bookstores to get their hands on a copy of Clarke’s original work.

‘Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell’ Brings Magic to the Regency Era

There are two ways to look at the question of how the story of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell kicks off. The first one is through a prophecy written in the book of the Raven King (Niall Greig Fulton), a human child raised by the fae that ruled over the land back in the days in which magic was a thing. The book in question is no mere paperback or hardcover, but a man called Vinculus (Paul Kaye) whose father drunkenly ate the book after losing a bet, cursing his child forever. Vinculus’ prophecy, in turn, speaks of two magicians that shall appear in England to bring magic back to its rightful place in an era in which such powers and wonders are forgotten by all but a handful of theoretical scholars. Such an era is none other than the one most beloved by fans of the romance genre, the Regency.

Caught between two great paradigm shifts, the French Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, the British Regency is hardly ever seen as a period prone to fantasy stories, with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies standing as an odd one-of-a-kind film. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, however, chooses exactly these early days of the 19th century to set its tale, in which magic is approached much like science was at the time: it is a gentleman’s game, a serious area of study, a maker of new weapons of war, a never-ending source of parlor tricks. In this scenario, the show’s two titular characters start their journey as friends only to end up as rivals, representing two completely different ways of looking at magic.

This is the other way we can say that the story of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell begins: with two men whose paths cross in the most unlikely of ways. A recluse that prefers the company of his books, Mr. Norrell (Eddie Marsan) comes to the attention of British society upon being challenged by a group of theoretical magicians — gentlemen who study merely the history and the form of magic — to perform a trick of his own. After charming a bunch of statues into talking and moving seemingly on their own, Mr. Norrell moves to London accompanied by his trusted servant, Childermass (Enzo Cilenti), where he prompts a country-wide spike in the interest for magic — real or imaginary, for God knows the streets of England are full of charlatans.

The frisson caused by Mr. Norrell’s emergence from his library is only heightened by the appearance of another magician, a much more reckless and adventurous man by the name of Jonathan Strange (Bertie Carvel). After running into Vinculus and receiving word of the prophecy, Strange, who never really had any interest in magic, finds himself as a magician and moves to London in search of someone that can help him with his studies. Initially taken by Norrell as a sort of apprentice, he soon becomes an accomplished magician on his own, and is taken by Lord Wellington (Ronan Vibert) to fight in Spain against Napoleon’s army.

While we are used to splitting fantasy between high and urban, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell offers us a reminder that there are other avenues for the genre. And alternative history seems to be a pretty promising road to take. Like other works of the kind, the show asks us a big “what if?”, however, this time, with an otherworldly spin: what if magic was real? Clarke’s worldbuilding, expertly transported to television by Harness and Haynes, isn’t one that concerns itself with creating a parallel universe hiding behind our busiest streets or a completely different realm in which the Middle Ages never ended. Instead, it focuses on recreating the history that we know so well but with a twist that changes everything.

‘Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell’ Doesn’t Shy Away from More Classic Fantasy

It’s a twist that affects even the king of England, so-called Mad King George (Edward Petherbridge), who is plagued by a fae known only as The Gentleman (Marc Warren) in a quest to kill him and have him replaced by Stephen (Ariyon Bakare), a servant who is also being tormented by his presence. The fairy kingdom is an integral part of the world of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Clarke’s universe isn’t simply one in which magic exists as a part of our realm: it also imagines other worlds that intersect with our own in which magic makes up the core of their existence. However, the fae, in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, are not gentle helpers of humanity. They are mischievous creatures with goals of their own, and they control magic that humans can’t even begin to understand.

The main villain of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, The Gentleman, finds his way into our world when Mr. Norrell evokes his presence to help bring back to life Lady Emma Pole (Alice Englert), the untimely deceased young wife of a nobleman whose favor he seeks. In order to achieve a pact with the entity, Mr. Norrell exchanges Emma’s return for half of her life, believing that this would simply mean that she would die at 40 instead of 80. However, what The Gentleman truly does is imprison Emma in her sleep in a never-ending ball in the fae realm, in which she is forced to dance non-stop. Once in our human land, The Gentleman begins to take other victims, such as Stephen and Jonathan’s own wife, Arabella. It’s a story about hubris and about how those who suffer for the crimes of wealthy gentlemen are rarely wealthy gentlemen themselves.

This intersection between our world and this other realm is represented in the show in a frequently unassuming manner, but the imagery of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is still stunning. While The Gentleman is merely a thin, pale David Bowie-looking man with a white wig and his ball is nothing more than a decadent masquerade, the visuals of Jonathan traveling beyond mirrors to rescue Arabella are still beautiful to gaze at. The special effects of scenes such as the summoning of the sand horses to protect the English coast from the Spanish Armada still retain their strength in 2023, leaving us in awe at what can only be described as a very specific sort of magic done by computers.

But it is not through its special effects nor through its approach to magic, no matter how astonishing they might be, that Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell wins us over. You can create the most wonderful of magical realms and fill it with the best creatures CGI has to offer and still no one will care for it if your world doesn’t feel lived in. Besides the magic, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is also a very human drama about broken friendships, love, ambition, greed, and whatever else makes up our shared experience. It’s about Strange trying to rescue Arabella from a horrible fate, about Arabella, Emma, and Stephen banding together to make their lives less terrifying, about Mr. Norrell’s fear that someone will take away the only thing that ever made him special.

Most of all, though, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is about how we, as humans, see knowledge. The show’s titular characters each represent an approach to knowledge that can be magical or scientific or anything else. Jonathan believes it should be widespread and put to good use, while Mr. Norrell wants to keep it locked behind closed doors. In the end, both of these men fail in their mission because they simply cannot accept that there is a limit to what they can do with their knowledge: Mr. Norrell releases an ancient evil upon the world, while Jonathan is driven mad by trying to fight forces beyond his ken. Still, they have opened up a field of study that had been closed and will now forever be in the hands of humanity. All of this might sound a little too esoteric, maybe even boring, but trust us when we say it’s not. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is one of the best fantasy stories ever made, and by far the greatest TV series of its kind. Though we must say that it is so unique that it can often be hard to determine what kind that is.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell isn’t available to stream in the U.S. It is available in Canada on Prime Video.

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