Streaming Netflix With Me and My Shadow

Many of us are still under at least partial stay-at-home orders, so I’d like to bring two of my favorite shows available on Netflix to your attention. Both are adapted from or inspired by excellent source material that they manage to surpass and both deal with the theme of duality, so grab your shadow-self and start watching.

The first show I’d like to recommend is the 2015 Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell series with Eddie Marsan, an excellent and underrated British actor, as Gilbert Norrell and Bertie Carvel as Jonathan Strange. This is a sumptuous series and I would encourage even those who found the novel a bit of a trudge, haven’t read the novel, or have no intention of reading the novel to watch this excellent production.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell tells the story of two rival magicians in early 19th century England. It is a world where there is magic but there has been no magic in England for some hundreds of years, a matter of consternation to a number of gentlemen who study magic as theory. Enter the first two real magicians in an age, Gilbert Norrell, who cares for nothing so much as his hoarded library of books on magic and has attained his abilities through study and Jonathan Strange, a younger man who is told by a street magician that he is destined to be a great magician. A prophecy says that two magicians will bring magic back to England and these two frenemies of decidedly different temperaments and approaches to magic are the center of the story.

The series follows the book closely and its production values are excellent. The costumes and sets/locations are gorgeous and perfectly done. The acting is uniformly good. The leads, Charlotte Riley as Arabella, Alice Englert as Lady Poole, Ariyon Bakare as Stephen Black, and Paul Kaye as Vinculus are all worth watching. Mark Warren, as The Gentleman, is the most convincingly real Faerie King I can imagine. I highly recommend this show if you are into fantasy and history.

The second show I’d like to review is The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance series. This one you probably didn’t miss but it does, of course, involve duality even more than “Jonathan Strange.” It is darker, deeper, and more complex than the original movie. This one is not for children, certainly not small ones, but I think that most adults who enjoyed the movie as children will find the series a delight.

You get to see so much more of the world of Thra in the series. You get to meet all seven matriarchal Clans of Gelflings and learn so much more about them. You also learn more about the origins of the urSkeks, Skeskis, and Mystics, not to mention Aughra. This world-building or expanding doesn’t detract from character development, though, and you’ll meet new favorite characters like Deet, Hup, and Brea. The emotions that were conveyed through puppets were astounding.

On that note, I am very glad that they used puppets assisted with CGI and not animation. The original used puppets and this was a Henson creation, so it would be sacrilegious to use anything but puppets. The voice acting is stellar, especially Mark Hamill as The Scientist and Simon Pegg as The Chamberlain. I am dying to tell you about the characters that Andy Samberg and Bill Hader voice but I don’t want to spoil that surprise.

There is a lot of correlation with current events in the series, if you know how to interpret themes and analogies. I couldn’t help but compare the Skeskis and Maudras to some current political figures…

I have a couple of bonus series to recommend, A Series of Unfortunate Events and Derry Girls. "Unfortunate Events" is based on the Lemony Snicket series with the excellent Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf. It is as least as enjoyable as the books. Derry Girls is a hysterical sitcom set in late 1980s/early 1990s Northern Ireland and involves the exploits of a group of teenage friends. The kids are relatable if you were a teenager around that time and Sister Michael is my spirit animal. That's all and happy streaming to you and your shadow.