Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - 'How is Lady Pole?'

Let's be honest; she's not good.

Mr Norrell is the English Magician, and his hangers-on are determined that Britain will accept no substitutes. After all, there's not much credit in being the personal friends of an English magician, rather than the definite article. When Mr Segundus, late of the York Society, introduces the self-taught Mr Strange to the scene, Messrs Drawlight and Lascelles are up in arms, but a display of his prodigal talent and a respectful request for an apprenticeship win over Mr Norrell himself.

Yet these are genteel matters compare to the fate of the titular Lady Pole, who is alive and wed, but now bound to the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair to dance helplessly at his revels every night as she sleeps, growing more and more exhausted and distracted, and quite unable to speak of what troubles her without recounting fanciful anecdotes. Mr Norrell will not help her and no other can do; the only other person who knows is Stephen Black, Lord Pole's butler, himself now caught in the Gentleman's web. Her husband merely locks her in her room, so that the only person who will at least credit that there is a problem is Arabella Strange, who knocks heads with Mr Norrell at an auction and catches the eye of the Gentleman as he spies on Strange.

Episode 2 of the BBC's adaptation of Susanna Clarke's grand epic kicks it up a notch to announce the arrival on the scene of the second magician of prophecy. While Mr Norrell is determined that magic be 'respectable', you can see the extras and supporting characters straining for him to do something exciting. The disappointment when his magical sea defences are entirely invisible is evident, and the catharsis when Strange cuts loose at the Horse Sands is almost palpable.

Meanwhile the enchanted Lady Pole and Stephen Black are shown as tragically powerless figures, and the audience yearns for them to get their chance to kick back against their fey oppressors (and at Lord Pole to boot.) The brief visit to the manor of Lost Hope is a masterpiece, a weird and distorted world of ruins and fragments where the Gentleman and his cohorts cavort with the hapless mortals in their power. Ironically, in her madness and her resistance to the attempts of others to have her confined, Lady Pole finds more backbone than as a whole and unensorcelled woman, but it is Arabella Strange who steps up to represent for the sisterhood, not just in believing in Lady Pole's plight, but in refusing to take any shit from her husband.

The series continues to impress with its combination of special effects and magical storyline with the utter commitment to period detail which lends an intense verisimilitude to the entire tale.