I think you may have missed something if you think the ending was "a juvenile accusation of the audience." Lemon, the character accusing the audience at the end, is pretty much insane. She had the bad luck to fall in love with someone who's basically a Randian sociopath, and the play is more or less about how…

That's right. Cafe des Artistes was a real restaurant where they used to hang out; the movie was filmed on a set inside a hotel, made to look like that restaurant.

In the book (which has dates on every chapter) the first events involving the York Society are in 1806, Norrell meets Lord Pole in late 1807, and then various other things happen in the war for a few years and no one gets to Salamanca until 1812. I don't know if they've changed the timeline of the show, or if the…

Yeah, I actually set the two versions up to play side by side (note: don't try this at home because you will end up feeling like a ridiculous person) and it was obvious that the non-dialogue scenes were going by faster too.

Segundus and Honeyfoot are also straight out of my imagination. Before Honeyfoot even had any lines, I knew which one he was.

Also— in the Susannah Clarke piece I linked to in another comment, she says in regard to the un-world-shaking way that magic gets applied to the war effort: "If Strange and Norrell had not been such perfect examples of their class, both so unquestioning about their duty to uphold the status quo, then it seems to me…

Btw, now that I've seen the uncut version too (from iTunes), I can say that the BBC America version is edited in a really annoying way. It's shorter by about 4 minutes out of 57; all the main events are the same but they just snipped a line here and there, shortened shots by a second or two, and added abrupt fadeouts…

I don't even see it as that. When Lascelles starts it off by saying something like "Well at least you got your revenge on Pole, his wife is dead", it's not because he's trying to suggest that Norrell bring her back— he has no clue that such a thing is even remotely possible; he says it because he's a horrible…

OK, it's definitely plausible that I just got the wrong impression of how those board seats were determined.

Well, we know that not only would the world not have come to an end, but that the English would have defeated Napoleon anyway without the help of Strange or Norrell— but the characters don't know that. And to be fair, this war was a lot closer to home than the war of 1812; even if Napoleon wasn't really in a position…

But it's not like that was the only chance they were ever going to get to vote Richard out. If Monica votes no, Monica gets fired, Raviga appoints a new board member, they hold another vote, Richard is still out.

He started to use the barista's phone, then he realized (and said) that he couldn't remember anyone's number.

She said in this really interesting piece (which contains plot details, though this excerpt doesn't):

All of the scenes where Childermass is talking Norrell through what he ought to do— so well done. You just get right away that he knows his shit, and that even though he knows Norrell is kind of a childish putz who needs a lot of hand-holding, he also respects Norrell's potential and appreciates that the guy actually…

I went ahead and got the first episode on iTunes after having seen it on BBCA, and it looks like iTunes has the original version. So now I have to decide whether I want to go on watching on cable. I always think I won't mind the BBCA cuts too much and then I do.

I read it for the first time pretty recently, and I remember not really knowing much more about the Raven King than berkowit28 does until a lot later in the book. I guess the footnotes did at least establish that he was an actual king of England, which is more than the show has done so far, but you don't get much more…

If you're not trolling then I don't know what to say. I mean… humor me for a second, just pick a thing that you like a lot, and that you think is complicated and interesting, and now imagine that someone tells you "I hated that, it was just boring shit! Tell me why you liked it!" Do you think you could come up with an…

(facepalm) Whoops, sorry, I was reading carelessly.

[removed dumbass question]

[er, book spoilers in this whole thread…]
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