Strange ways

BBC One’s 2015 choice of Sunday-night drama series is beginning to resemble the career of the kind of Hollywood actor who alternates between reliable crowd-pleasers and more eccentric personal projects. The year started with the return of the much-loved Last Tango in Halifax, followed by the distinctly peculiar A Casual Vacancy. Now, after the mainstream triumph of Poldark, we get Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell — which, whatever else you might think about it, definitely can’t be accused of feeling like drama by committee.

Based on Susanna Clarke’s 2004 novel, the programme opened in the early 19th century, with the Peninsular War going badly and, worse still, magic — once ‘as much a part of this country as rain’ — having apparently died out 300 years before. The early scenes were mildly, and as it turned out misleadingly, satirical. A voiceover introduced us to the self-important Society of Magicians which met in York on the third Wednesday of every month, when they ‘read each other dull papers on the history of magic’ rather than actually doing any of the stuff themselves.