I did pretty much what I always do when I’m adapting something, which is basically take the book to pieces and build up the dramatic structure behind it then graft all of the memorable bits and things that people will remember from the book back onto a dramatic storyline. So I asked for another and they gave me one. We had initially been offered six parts, but I’d been writing it for a few weeks when I realized I wasn’t going to manage to get it all into six. And I was looking forward to trying to turn a book that had been called “unfilmable” into something that could be filmed.Īs for how I went about it, technically I split the book up into chunks and worked out where each episode would begin and end. It was a very challenging thing to do, but I was looking forward to it because I love the book so much. Tell me about the immensity of this project and how you went about tackling it. Paul Kaye as Vinculus in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell I recently spoke with Harness about his approach to such a seemingly overwhelming task and how critical it was to have constant collaboration amongst all members of the production team throughout. Starring Bertie Carvel, Eddie Marsan and Marc Warren, the series is already underway in the UK and premiers in the US on June 13 via BBC America. So screenwriter Peter Harness ( Wallander, Doctor Who: Kill the Moon) had his work cut out for him when it came to adapting the novel for a BBC One miniseries.

There are also some 200 footnotes, sometimes taking up entire pages, in which Clarke references an entire backstory of magic that she created. A ten-year effort for the author herself, this 1000-page story of two magicians in Napoleonic England is renowned for its complexity and attention to the minutest detail in terms of language, style and genre. It’s not often you hear a body of work referred to as “unfilmable” these days.īut that was precisely the reputation attached to Susanna Clarke’s epic novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

Allan h ryskind