Carnival Row isn’t based on previously existing intellectual property but that still doesn’t make it very original, says Dan Slevin.
Orlando Bloom and Carla Delevingne play tragic lovers in Carnival Row. Photo: Jan Thijs/Amazon
The streaming wars of 2019 are heating up. In a few weeks entertainment behemoths Apple and Disney will launch their new services designed to compete with Netflix. Amazon’s Prime Video has been mostly an also-ran in Aotearoa, partly because of market inertia and also the fact that Amazon has no local consumer presence here making Amazon Prime’s free shipping discount moot.
But despite that, Prime (not to be – except often, in reality – to be confused with Sky’s free-to-air channel) continues to throw vast amounts of money at content that will compete. Pre-production has already begun on the Lord of the Rings* series which will keep the New Zealand screen sector busy for a few more years. That’s likely to become the most expensive television series ever made and it does appear as if Amazon has decided that – based on the success of HBO’s Game of Thrones – production values are going to be the deciding factor in the battle that is to come. Production values and blood. Production values, blood … and boobs. The Game of Thrones formula in a nutshell.
Carnival Row production values measure approximately 0.5 GOTs (on the now-standard measure we critics use for these things). Photo: Jan Thijs/Amazon
Carnival Row started out life as a feature film script by Travis Beacham (Pacific Rim). It ended up on something called The Black List, the annual unofficial top ten un-produced scripts, but studios were wary about committing to a big budget fantasy picture that wasn’t based on previously existing IP. Eventually it found its way to Amazon and they suggested blowing it up to TV series length – in fact multiple series as a second season has already been ordered.
The show is set in a kind of parallel universe of steampunk Edwardiana where a prosperous city state called The Burgue has been forced (by their own unwillingness to enter a war) to accept a large community of fairy folk (or ‘Fae’) from a neighbouring country that has been overrun by a rather more warlike nation called “The Pact”. Known as “Critch” to the locals, the Fae and the Pucks are considered second-class citizens, relegated to menial or sex worker jobs and constantly in fear that local political imperatives will make their presence even more unwelcome.
“Pucks” in Carnival Row. Photo: Amazon
Orlando Bloom (Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean) plays a detective named Philostrate who has a dark back story including uncertain parentage and a doomed romance with a Fae named Vignette (Carla Delevingne).
The show has a bit of everything – police procedural, palace intrigue, a rich fantasy world, magic, and parallels with the plight of refugees and minorities in the modern world. What it doesn’t have is dialogue that actors can lift off the page and bring to life or direction that might encourage them to try.
Bloom does well at reinventing himself as a grizzled old hack after years as a handsome leading man – he’s an executive producer so there’s motivation for you – but other fine actors (Jared Harris, Simon McBurney) look like they are, as the saying goes, phoning it in. Mostly better are the women – less well-known to me for the most part – but working much harder. Karla Crome as Vignette’s best friend and guide to the dangerous world she has landed in is notable in this respect.
Photo: Amazon
There’s a tone problem, too. The show features an awful lot of cursing – that doesn’t add any flavour or wit to proceedings – as well as a regular smattering of the kind of nudity that streaming audiences are becoming accustomed to and it can also get quite violent and bloody. Unnecessarily so, I think.
I do wonder whether this show might get a bigger audience if it worked harder on fleshing out its rich fantasy world and its characters and aimed for a slightly more family-friendly audience. It’s a funny thing that watching so much “grown-up” content on TV hasn’t desensitised me to it, quite the opposite.
Carnival Row consists of eight roughly one-hour episodes, is rated 16+ according to Amazon’s own system and is streaming in full on Amazon’s Prime Video service now.
[*We keep saying Lord of the Rings but these stories will be closer to ‘Lord of the Rings-adjacent’ stories rather a remake or reboot. They should just call them The Silmarillion and be done with it.]
