10. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
I thought long and hard about whether or not to include this one, since I know there's a BBC miniseries in the pipeline. It even seems like a project that's eventually going to get done, with
casting announcements still coming in as recently as October 25th, 2013. (If I may be allowed to instantly date this article and ruin its pristine "evergreen" status.) Of course, given the book's massive popularity, it's unlikely that a script based on it would languish in development hell, so I'm sure we'll see the series come to fruition in 2014, or 2015 at the latest. That said, television miniseries (miniserieses?) seem to have the air of a consolation prize to me. I can see how the medium is good for dramatic presentations of history (Band of Brothers, The Borgias, Rome, etc.), but it is hit and miss with fiction (Earthsea). If the television adaptation of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
works well, so much the better, but I would still love to see it as a movie series. If I may wax poetic for a moment, there's just something
magical about going to the theater, sitting in a dark room full of strangers (maybe in costume), and watching a story unfold on a screen the size of a barn. A television miniseries, even if well done, lacks that magic (and you can't quite replicate it by turning off the lights in your living room and having a few friends over; I've tried that). Harry Potter deserved that magic. Lord of the Rings deserved it. Certainly Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell deserves it as well.