Just like that, a fun host brings to life the magic of Tommy Cooper
Enthusiasm is essential on the telly. We need non- stop excessive energy to convince us to keep watching. that’s why noel Edmonds and Keith Chegwin are naturals for the box, even if two minutes stuck in a li ft with either of them i n real l i fe would turn you i nto a twitching wreck.
Without enthusiasm, anything can seem dull. Give a documentary voice- over job to an actor who is only half-interested, and the result is the tV equivalent of mogadon — the entire audience will be asleep within minutes.
stephen mulhern, one of those faces familiar for everything from game shows to this morning and itV2’s behind-the-scenes show for BGt addicts, Britain’s Got more talent, started his career as a magician. he proved the ideal presenter for a quick run through the history of conjuring tricks, The Magic Show Story (itV) because every clip made him so deliriously happy.
he was almost squealing with excitement watching ancient blackand-white footage of amiable old duffer David nixon making eggs disappear, and when he got to try one of tommy Cooper’s tricks, he almost passed out.
the truth is that we’ve seen dear old tommy’s repeats so many times that we are in danger of mustering no more than a nostalgic smile. and though i loved David nixon as a child, today he looks like a parish councillor doing party tricks. But stephen’s sheer joy was contagious. ‘i love magic,’ he declared. ‘i love it a lot!’ no one could doubt him.
But nobody loves magic in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (BBC1). someone appears to have cast a miserable spell over the entire cast.
Every time Bertie Carvel, as the newlywed Jonathan, performs sorcery, he has the pained and puzzled expression of a collie that has swallowed a wasp and wishes it hadn’t.
his discomfort could have been forgiven when the Duke of Wellington (Ronan Vibert, who was not nearly haughty enough) ordered him to reanimate the corpses of three neapolitan soldiers f or questioning. they were supposed to be zombies, but they looked more like the sex Pistols on a seventies chat show: drunk, smelly and sneering as they lurched around and bumped into each other.
Jonathan was supposed to kill them again after interrogation but he didn’t know the spell for that, so he perched up a ladder and smiled anxiously at them. this was funny for the wrong reasons, like a version of sharpe with hugh Grant as the napoleonic war hero.
Eddie marsan (mr norrell) began the series despondent and has got steadily glummer. Perhaps he’s depressed about his wig, which l ooks l i ke an albino badger attempting to mate with his head.
Writer Peter harness adapted this seven- part series f rom susanna Clarke’s breeze-block of a book.
the sheer weight of its nearly 800 pages must have pressed all the characters flat, because they are as two-dimensional as cardboard. Every scene is completely static.
the cast members sit around tables or face each other across desks and don’t move. Even a battle segment was motionless — the British soldiers stood among the trees as the French obligingly shot cannonballs at them.
this failed drama is like watching a child’s paper theatre, with the actors cut from the pages of magazines and stuck on sticks.
it has its fans on twitter — the sort of Goth-geeks who were hooked on harry Potter at 11 and never grew up. But even they can sense that this brand of magic is less than enthralling, and protest we should read the book before passing judgment.
Brilliant tV versions send us rushing to devour the original, but this adaptation is in danger of killing the literary magic genre deader than a decomposing neapolitan soldier.
Jonathan strange & mr norrell has worked one minor wonder, however. after a tepid launch with just 4.5 million viewers, the second episode lost a further two million — almost half its audience. Quite a trick.