TV Review: Carnival Row, Season 1 (2019). A dark fairy tale, struggling under the weight of it's own mythology.

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Tv Review: Carnival Row (2019) by Ben Jeffries (31/8/2019)

Season 1 (30/8/2019)

8 Episodes, 50-67 minutes

Fantasy, Drama, Romance, Thriller,

Streaming on Amazon Prime Video

Carnival Row is a complicated amalgam of theme and genre that occasionally feels lost in it’s own flights of fantasy.

After years of human invasions have laid waste to their rich homelands, mythical beings called the Fae have traveled as refugees to the Victorian fantasy city of The Burgue. It’s here, in the notorious Fae neighbourhood of Carnival Row, that new arrival Vignette Stonemoss (Cara Delevingne) finds Rycroft Philostrate (Orlando Bloom), the lover she believed killed in the war. Once a soldier for the Burgue, Philo is now a police inspector on the heels of a brutal serial killer who targets Fae and human alike. Philo and Vignette find the embers of their dangerous affair kindled anew as tensions between the immigrant and native populations of the city grow, creating an air of increasing intolerance. As the pair are once more thrown together by circumstance, Philo’s hunt for the savage killer will uncover secrets which threaten to shake the world. A dark fairy tale, Carnival Row is laden with bloody violence, graphic sex, stormy romance, and social upheaval. With a beautiful aesthetic and rich mythology, the creatively presented story occasionally feels spread too thinly between it’s various interwoven plots.

Every now and then you come up against a piece of storytelling so detailed and textured that you can feel the years it spent stuck in the creators head; evolving, expanding, ripening. From it’s richly contoured world, brimming with culture, politics, and personality, to the carefully plotted mystery at the core of it’s narrative, Carnival Row has all the marks of a thing which has been fretted over by it’s creator for endless hours, embellished here, decorated there, honed and smoothed to a glossy finish. What can happen to a story that spends so long untold is that it grows too far beyond it’s original scope, and in it’s long period of incubation the story of Carnival Row has been so thoroughly expanded that the fiery romance at it’s core is no longer the focus. Each new element of the story demands it’s own real estate in the screenplay, taking valuable space from the central plot, leaving it feeling under served and less than meaningful.

There are a lot of moving parts to keep track of as the shows narrative develops, operating on several different tracks and levels. While Philo and Vignette rekindle their turbulent romance and the inspector gets to grips with a Ripper-esque serial killer mystery, elsewhere the old-money family the Spurnroses and their new neighbour, a Puck named Mr Agreus Astrayon (David Gyasi), act out a Victorian manners play, while the Burgue’s ruling class attempt to best each other through socio-political maneuvering. Woven through these plot lines are themes of class and race discrimination, heritage and identity, colonialism and multiculturalism. Each distinct cultural group has their own unique identity and background, including languages, religions, social structures and attitudes. The story takes place in a complicated, textured world rich in mythology, and the excellent production design presents it all in beautiful detail.

As Philo goes about his investigations, visiting witches and brothels and orphanages on the heels of the killer, he encounters all manner of people, Fae and human alike. He meets winged fairies called “Pix”, and fawns with horned heads and hoofed feet called Pucks, each uniquely styled and characterised through stunning costumes, makeup and prosthetics. Where the world or characters require CGI embellishments they meld almost seamlessly with the practical elements of the production, creating terrifying monsters and arresting displays of beauty. Whether we’re on the rain soaked cobblestones of Carnival Row, or in the plush sitting room of an upper class mansion, the production design and camera work are cinematic and expansive, extending the world of Carnival Row beyond the normally claustrophobic boundaries of a TV series.

Carnival Row was marketed to the public as a two hander, with Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne playing the star crossed lovers at the centre of the tale, but in reality the show is closer to an ensemble piece. The shows plot does largely revolve around the two lovers, that’s true, but as the story expands to include the political intrigues of the Burgue’s parliament, the financial woes of the Spurnrose’s, and the daily struggles of the various refugee Fae living on Carnival Row, the cast expands with it.

As the leads Bloom and Delevigne each give good showings. Bloom is brooding, quietly gruff, and dour as the damaged policeman, Inspector Rycroft Philostrate. Though his performance tends toward restrained and flat in the more melodramatic scenes, in the louder moments he carries the show well with his rough shouts and intense stare. Delevingne is much more dynamic as the Fae woman, Vignette Stonemoss. A former warrior herself, Vignette is just as fiery and tough as Philo, but where he is reserved and quiet, she’s forthright and open. It’s an emotionally agile performance that demands a lot from the actress, and she meets the challenge well as she moves from tearful and lovesick to indignant outrage as Vignette is subjected to the indignities of life as a Fae in The Burgue.

David Gyasi is stunning as the rich Puck, Agreus Astrayon, newly moved to the Burgue’s richest neighbourhood. The incredible poise he maintains in the face of his rich human neighbours is fascinating to watch as Gyasi makes a simple turn of the head into an inflection point, and his performance only escalates in the moments when Agreus’ facade breaks and his inner fire is revealed. Opposite Gyasi, Tamzin Merchant is vivacious as the young socialite Imogen Spurnrose. A product of polite society, Imogen is unable to see past her upbringing and ingrained prejudices when Agreus moves in next door, turning the rich neighbourhood on it’s ear, and Merchant does a wonderful job charting the characters’ slow turnaround. As Imogen and Agreus lock horns over tea and cake, the Burgue’s head of state, Chancellor Absolom Breakspear, is locked in his own battle with his political rivals. Played by Jared Harris, Breakspear is a rigid, self righteous man, with a wayward son (Arty Froushan) and an ambitious wife (Indira Varma). Harris gives the character an air of probity with his steady bearing, but also a note of menace as he quietly fumes at the impropriety of his rivals slurs.

Each of these well crafted and well performed plot lines gives the audience a different perspective on the fascinating world of Carnival Row, but at a cost. They tend to steal the focus from the central mystery and the fraught romance of Vignette and Philo which early episodes promise. With all their attendant table setting and story needs, these other plots break up the rhythm of the show in way that upsets the flow of the story from one episode to another, causing it to stumble in one spot before rushing in another, distracted at crucial moments by it’s own fantastic stage.

The Venn diagram of audiences who will find things to love in this intricately detailed fantasy is a broad one. Genre fans eager for a darker, more mature, story to fill the vacuum left by Game of Thrones will find plenty of adult fare and lore fragments spread throughout the show to grab hold of. Romantics will find themselves caught up in the complicated histories of Vignette and Philo, and their emotional reunion. Lovers of historical and alt-history fiction may well find the setting of The Burgue fascinating, with it’s burgeoning industrial revolution and stratified social order so reminiscent of the Victorian era. Sprinkled between these elements are notes of horror, and extended forays into crime fiction. It’s a heady mix of genre’s, influences, themes, and perspectives which has been assembled into a uniquely original setting by creators Travis Beacham and Rene Echevarria.

Carnival Row is beautiful to look at, and an intriguing thing to prise open and examine from various angles, supported by a deep mythology, creative setting and solid performances. It’s story never truly takes flight, weighed down by it’s own creative embellishments, but from time to time it does manage to float a fair way off the ground, buoyed by it’s magical setting and boundless potential.

6.5/10

Carnival Row Stars: Orlando Bloom, Cara Delevingne, Karla Crome, Arty Froushan, Indira Varma, Andrew Gower, David Gyasi, Tamzin Merchant, Caroline Ford, Jared Harris

Created by: Travis Beacham, Rene Echevarria

Written by: Travis Beacham, Peter Cameron, Rene Echevarria, Kristin Robinson, Stephanie K. Smith, Ian Deithchman, Guillermo del Toro, Marc Guggenheim

Directed by: Thor Freudanthal, Jon Amiel, Anna Foerster, Andy Goddard, Paul McCuigan

a Production from: Amazon Studios, Legendary Television Productions, Stillking Films

Distributed by: Amazon Video