Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Episode 6: Recap and Review

Anyone for Venice? This magical floating city is all the rage with poets, don't you know.

It's also a good place if you're a fugitive magician hell-bent on making yourself mad in order to access Raven King magic.

In the beautiful squalor of his Venetian hideaway, all tattered lace, bare floorboards and mirrors – lots and lots of mirrors – Strange pushes the romantic notion of the of the bohemian outsider hard. "I wish to secure myself a faerie servant," says he, cracking open a boiled egg by the Grand Canal. 

Keen to know what he's up to, Norrell is determined to track him down. "Can you not find him by magic?" asks Lascelles. It's a fair point.

"He does not wish to be found," says Norrell. "Is there no gossip on the streets?"

The light bulb moment belongs to Childermass. Gossip may be elusive on the streets but there's plenty to be had in prison, where Drawlight is banged up for debt. "If you've 'eard summat, spit it out," says Childermass, a man of few, but splendidly enunciated, words. 

Drawlight's genius for tittle-tattle is undiminished. Strange has been taking certain powders and smoky preparations, he says. "The kind of thing to provoke visions of palaces in Xanadu or Christ stuck up a tree. And suchlike.”

What larks. And in this instance gossip does pay the bills. Paying Drawlight's debts Norrell sends him to Venice to go after Strange and find out his plans. That's it Drawlight, play to your strengths. If anyone can do it, you can. I'm glad he's back, I've missed him.

Anyway, um, regurgitated mouse, anyone? Back in Venice, Strange may be on the road to madness but he ain't got nuthin' on the crazy mouse-eating cat lady down the road. An encounter in the street with father and daughter travellers Dr and Flora Greysteel leads him to Mrs Delgado – and her mousy vomit, the essence of which he captures in a bottle as a sort of eau de rodent. Knocking it back – are you still reading this? – induces a Munch-like terror in Strange, but at least he is able to get what he wants now.

An audience with the Gentleman. The powerful, moving scenes in which Strange begs Thistledown to bring his wife back are some of the best of this serial yet. "You do not have a corpse to hand," says the Gentleman, knowing full well there is no corpse. Over at Lost Hope, waltzing Arabella is trapped forever in a classier version of Falco's Rock Me Amadeus video.

As the episode unravels – Strange's gatecrashing of Lost Hope and discovery of Arabella, his imprisonment within a black tornado-like tower in the middle of Venice, the scene with Stephen and Vinculus by the pond, with Vinculus' apparent death at the hands of Thistledown – there is a sense that the Raven King is getting closer.

"There are some that say that the Raven King is not a man but an idea," says Strange. "That he's not one man but several." Not having read the book, I am none the wiser. But whatever he is he's bound to appeal to Flora, with her penchant for "dangerous, dangerous men", Byronic types including the actual Byron himself. My word.   

As usual, there was a lot to this episode, too much to mention here. But they include a brilliant and uninhibited performance from Paul Kaye as Vinculus, and appearances from Clive Game of Thrones Mantel (although I remember him more for Holby City and for being quite dishy in that episode of The Vicar of Dibley when Dawn French falls in a puddle), and – yay! – the loquacious Mr Tantony. 

"Madness is what I want! Madness is what I want!" shouts Strange during his altercation with a reluctant herbalist. Oh, the myth and romance of it all is almost too much to handle – in a good way. I have just one question. If Norrell can make Strange's books disappear (he has to have kept one for his library at Hurfew, surely?), why can't he magic back the old books that Strange lost while fighting in Portugal?

In the words of Mr Tantony...