Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Carnival Row’ On Amazon Prime, Where Fairies Are Persecuted By Humans In A Fantasy World

We have to admit: We approached Carnival Row with caution. Not that we don’t love Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne, but the idea that a human and a fairy investigate murders in a Bavarian fantasy world seemed to be a bit much. But, as we constantly learn in this job, good writing and performances can make any outlandish premise sing. Read on for more about this unique series….

CARNIVAL ROW: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Stone figures that depict the war between humans and fairies in the faes’ homeland, Timanoc. The land was plundered for its riches and the fairy population decimated, especially after the troops from The Burgue withdrew seven years ago and left in the hands of the fairies’ mortal enemy, The Pact.

The Gist: We see a group of fairies, who have paid for passage to The Burgue, getting attacked in a wooded area near a shoreline cliff. Most get shot in the head, but one fairy, Vignette Stonemoss (Cara Delevingne), manages to escape via sheer determination. Problem is: She was the one who arranged for this passage to begin with. But she’s so broken by the experience, she decides to stay on the ship and escape. Another problem: The ship gets attacked and is destroyed, but Vignette is the only survivor. Before the ship sinks, though, Vignette longs for the Burguian officer, Rycroft Philostrate (Orlando Bloom), that she fell in love with. She was told that he died in battle.

But Philostrate is alive and is working as a police inspector in The Burgue. Because of his war experience, he’s sympathetic to the fairy population that has emigrated to the city. There’s a strong segment of the population who thinks that the new residents shouldn’t be there, as they’re taking jobs from Burguians and they’ve brought a seedy element, as seen on Carnival Row, a crime-ridden area filled with street peddlers and low-class brothels. Philostrate is trying to track down a man he calls “Unseelie Jack”, who attacks fairies and leaves them for dead.

Vignette is taken in by Ezra Spurnrose (Andrew Gower), who owned the ship that was destroyed, and puts her to work as a ladyservant to his sister Imogen (Tamzin Merchant), who is single and eager to see the aristocrat who is going to move in across the street — though she’s a bit disappointed when she finds the aristocrat is a horned faun named Agreus (David Gyasi), which is unheard of in her neighborhood.

Philostrate gets inside info on the Row’s goings on from a blue-haired fairy poet/prostitute named Tourmaline Larou (Karla Crome), who is also friends with Vignette. When Vignette seeks her out, working on a tip from someone on the ship that was destroyed, Tourmaline tells her that Philostrate is still alive. Angered that he betrayed her, she cuts off the braid that was her remembrance of him, flies over to the boarding house where he lives (a highly illegal move in The Burgue), and threatens him with a huge knife for abandoning her seven years prior. But she tosses the knife away and says disgustedly “you’re not worth it.”

This is right after Philostrate chases down Unseelie Jack (Matthew Gravelle), who tells him that the fairies bring a darkness that the humans can’t fathom, and considering some of the darkness Philostrate had seen to that point, that’s quite a declaration.

Our Take: Carnival Row seems like a show that should have been based on a fantasy novel, or a comic book. But it’s a new creation, from Travis Beacham and René Echevarria, and it’s quite a daring premise, even for a streaming series. A Bavarian fantasy world? Fairies? Murder? It’s a lot.

But, at least in the first episode, this world created by Beacham and Echevarria works very well, thanks to some sharp writing and fine acting from Bloom, Delevingne and the supporting cast. We haven’t even mentioned that the great Jared Harris is among those supporting actors, playing the Burgue’s chancellor, Absalom Breakspear, who is trying to balance the needs of the burgeoning fairy population against an insurgent anti-immigration faction within his own government. He puts in his usual fantastic performance, as does Indira Varma as his powerful wife Piety.

Obviously, the immigration theme is germane to the times we live in, but Beacham and Echevarria truly use it to drive plot rather than make it a parallel to the situation our country is in. Are there parallels? Of course. The fairies are escaping a war-torn homeland where their lives are constantly in danger, and coming into the Burgue hoping for a better life. But it feels more like it’s a jumping-off point to build the world and tell the story, not just a multi-episode commentary on current events.

Delevingne, who is probably best known for Suicide Squad, shows a streak of toughness, informed by a lifetime of pain and suffering, that few actors can pull off while wearing a pair of fairy wings, and Bloom shows that he can be play a hard-driving bitter character that just wants to see justice served. What the first episode does well is set up the larger story, which is a series of murders of fairies that Vignette and Philostrate will investigate while falling back in love with each other, very well, giving us action and a good introduction to the various players in The Burgue without resorting to scene after scene of two people talking. By the end of the first episode, we were hooked, and considering period pieces and fantasy shows usually have us reaching for the remote, that’s saying a lot.

Sex and Skin: Philostrate has sex with Portia Fyfe (Maeve Dermody), the widow who owns the boarding house. We also see Tourmaline having a winged orgasm while having sex with Jonah Breakspear (Arty Froushan) who, despite who his family is, likes to get drunk and frequent Tourmaline’s brothel. He pays a high price for that, though.

Parting Shot: A fairy collecting debris from the shipwreck is attacked by some monster in a drain pipe, while the words of Jack play over the scene.

Sleeper Star: We hope we see a lot of Crome as Tourmaline; her character is one of the most well-defined supporting characters in he first episode.

Most Pilot-y Line: The sequence where Philostrate chases Jack is mostly well thought-out, but the scene is so dark it’s hard to tell who has the upper hand at times.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The first episode of Carnival Row does a great job of setting up a complex world, and its performances will help keep viewers engaged.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Carnival Row on Prime Video