Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Episode 5: Recap and Review

In case anyone's s still wondering I'm definitely on #TeamChildermass. Is he the coolest character, or what? Not only can he see straight through odious Lascelles, but he's also great at hiding in bushes – while wearing a top hat!

He could have done with Strange's magic bowl, though, when he took that bullet for Norrell. Because it's the Battle of Waterloo, which looks as muddy and appealing as the Glastonbury festival. And in the face of his opponents Strange's bowl, which he wears on his back like a tortoise, doubles as a shield.

Conducting the elements like Mozart conducting music, crushing the enemy with a giant fist made of mud, or strangling them with ivy and flinging them over a wall, Strange just about comes out of this battle alive. In these short but powerful opening scenes you can sense his frustration that if he had the Raven King on his side he could do a lot more. "Compare our sorry reckonings with the magicians of the golden age," he later says to Lord Pole. "They transform themselves into mice, foxes, rivers. They make ships out of cobwebs and houses out of rosebushes..."

It's dangerous thinking that Strange has put into his forthcoming book, which Norrell says will put fire in the bellies of the Johannites – rioters in the north who have lost employment to the new machines, and who proclaim themselves followers of John Uskglass.

Not that Norrell cares much about this, but any excuse to stop Strange's book and ruin him, which he and effete fop turned Norrell confidant Lascelles have vowed to do. Lascelles is out for blood after Strange "murdered" his own book. He also wants to oust Childermass so he can have Norrell all to himself. As if there wasn't enough war in Belgium. The rivalry and hatred are definitely Amadeusesque.

Any road up, you can't be in Yorkshire and not wonder around the moors in the snow, it's literary law, tha knows. As Thistledown's sinister Arabella doppleganger roams the wuthering heights dressed only in a black gown, Stephen lures the real Arabella away from her bed under the pretext that Lady Pole is in need of her help.

But Lady Pole's 'bad dreams in the night' tell her what's really happening – that Thistledown has kidnapped the real Arabella and taken her to Lost Hope, where he adds her to his collection of dead dancers. "I do not offer anything that would not be exquisitely agreeable to you," says he. Shopkeepers of the world, take note. That's how you sell to a woman.

Turning up at Strange's house, Thistledown's 'black' Arabella, 'so cold' and delirious – chillingly and superbly embodied by Charlotte Riley – does not last the night. Grief-stricken Strange is determined to bring her back to life but his desperate attempts to resurrect her, as Norrell did Lady Pole, are mocked by the Gentleman.  "Really, watching this fellow trying to do magic is like seeing a man sit down to eat at dinner with his coat on backwards," says he.

The longer it takes, the less appealing the prospect of a resurrected corpse will be. As Arabella's brother Henry says, "What would it be if you brought it back now?" And so, with Strange's pleadings for Norrell's help ignored, to a funeral in the snow. Hats off to the person who dug that frozen hole.

Meanwhile, Honeyfoot thinks there is a method in Lady Pole's 'madness'. "I do not believe Lady Pole's stories are nonsense," he says. "I believe there is a pattern to them."

Her ramblings – what Segundus terms the "rose at her mouth", a gagging device used in muffling spells – obscure the truth of her resurrection. As she is unable to speak of what happened to her, Segundus and Honeyfoot decide to induce Lady Pole's stories so they may study them – and remove the rose.

"I think what you are telling, my lady, are fairytales," says Honeyfoot. "But told in some way as if the fairy is telling them."

"Humantales," says Segundus. "As it were." It's a lovely line.

And as usual, there are many lovely moments. The scene when Strange asks Childermass to work with him – "I think that I would make a very bad pupil, worse than you." (Meaning 'better'?) – and the one when he confronts Norrell about why he wouldn't help him bring back Arabella. "What was the magic? Why will you not tell me? I know why! Charlatan!"

Does Strange know? Accused by Norrell of murdering Arabella with witchcraft and thrown in prison, Strange has nothing to lose. His "How does one work up a little madness in oneself?" speech and the look on his face reminds me of Salieri's "How does one kill a man?" bit in Amadeus.

"Merlin!" says Grant. "You cannot propose that you purposely become a lunatic!"

But it's too late. The puddle in the cell is a mirror, and Strange has disappeared behind it.

This is a complex plot, containing a lot of ambiguity. It's not always easy to tell what's happening, but perhaps, as with magic, that is the point. Putting magic straight into history, giving it a context and a history all of its own, makes it all the more believable and real. And not only has this great series got bits of Amadeus in it, this week there was also a Kate Bush vibe. Folk who know me know I'm in heaven.