Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Cards

The BBC is currently showing Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell on Sunday nights, from the novel by Susanna Clarke, it's the story of two magicians in England during the Napoleonic Wars. It's coming to America and international distribution later. The show is dark and contains magic, scrying, divination and lot's of the eclectic

Tonight's show had tarot cards featured and I captured them to work out what they were (it was a very quick glimpse as they got covered with blood). It's some form of line drawn version of TdeM I think. I decided to research into it and found the BBC were using cards in that deck for promotion of the show. I also found out they made a Tarot Deck of all the characters for the show with tarot archetypes that was sent to journalists and reviewers! Someone asked a BBC PR guy on twitter and the "promo" tarot deck is for promotion only and will not be available to buy I thought it was interesting their usage of tarot though.

Pictures attached:-

2015-06-07 21.04.55.jpg - capture from tonights episode (it was a quick flash)
strangetarot.jpg - promo on social networking using the same cards as above
promostrange.jpg - the promo deck of the shows characters
promostrange2.jpg - another pic of the promo deck, I wonder if that is the card backs.

Thanks for posting that, it's one of my favorite novels. Unfortunately it's on too late for me, so I'll catch it if it's ever shown on Amazon Instant Video. Definitely an interesting use of tarot! I seem to recall that in the book the deck used wasn't specifically tarot, but I could be wrong.

I believe it was; a TdM. If I can FACE it, I'll look... I am having someone record it for me, seeing as I am out of the UK. He also loves the book - and says it isn't as good on TV....
A

ETA well the CHAPTER is called Chapter 21: The cards of Marseilles

and Vinculus draws

• XVIII La Lune
• XVI La Maison Dieu reversed
• The Nine of Swords
• Valet de Baton
• The Ten of Batons reversed
• II La Papesse
• X La Rove de Fortvne
• The Two of Coins
• The King of Cups

The next chapter is called The Knight of Wands...

I rest my case !

BBC America is going to start airing this as a mini series this week and am so looking forward to it- loved the book. Thanks for making a screen shot I love that the cards look homemade. And how cool that they made promo cards!

whitehart said:

BBC America is going to start airing this as a mini series this week and am so looking forward to it- loved the book. Thanks for making a screen shot I love that the cards look homemade. And how cool that they made promo cards!

Click to expand...

Thank you so much for posting about BBC America! *Heading off to
program DVR*

Fantastic card images. Too bad they won't be available to buy.

That's so cool! Thanks for sharing the photos.

I've been recording the series, so I can watch them all together. This has bumped it to the top of my viewing queue.

Oh man - I am sooo LOVING this tv series.

The two magicians: one - the perfect ceremonialist (Mr.Norell), lost in his library and refusing to face the major blunder he's just made with magic (of calling up a Demon Lord - more specifically a Fae King, without quite knowing what he was doing. Now, the Fae King is lose and ofcourse, in a mind to please himself questionably.) and the other - a blundering 'natural' magician (Jonathan Strange) who's only really read one skinny book.
They're just perfect!
Not to mention - Mark Warren (the English actor) makes a wonderful Demon Lord/Fae King (named in a perfectly old English fashion - "The Gentleman").

You mean they've made cards just for promotion. WHAT? Boo.

@ Lee - I've not read the book. (production is generally never as good a reading 'the book').
In the tv series, the tarot cards have been hand drawn by Mr. Norrell's faithful assistant, Childermass, who uses them to read for that street magician (the one who goes around professing the arrival of the 2 magicians) in a sort of "magical challenge". The street magician wins the challenge - as when he 'reverses the tables' and reads with the cards for Childermass in turn - all the cards have become one-and-the-same single card. Ofcourse - the street magician then laugh and atmospherically 'disappears'.

Excellent, thanks gregory and Tanga! I'm happy to be proven wrong.

In the book, Childermass says he borrowed a deck of the 'cards of Marseilles' from a sailor so that he could copy them. He drew his own on whatever scraps of paper he could find as he couldn't even afford paper! He had to give the deck back before he was finished, so some of the cards were from memory and thus original to Childermass. He then mounted the scraps of paper onto the yellowish stock at a later time. The whole deck is quite old and worn out. Later in the book when Norrell discovers Childermass has a tarot deck, he derides him soundly for practising such cheap charlatans' tricks.

The series is pretty good, and has great moments balanced by some silly goofs --the sand horses scene is awesome, but the ship is empty, so who is going to drown, so close to shore? And the Gentleman is one-note evil, whereas in the book he's very charismatic, a lot more complex, and, as Stephen puts it in the end, "means only kindness," no matter how horrible his deeds.

But it's so perfectly cast... Although Childermass is just too good-looking for his own good, IMHO. He looks like a sulking rock star, not... Childermass.

Anyway, we should write the BBC a letter or something to see if they can produce and sell a version of that grubby Marseille deck, don't you think? I know moi wants one.