It's sort of Lord of The Rings meets Downton Abbey meets Pan's Labyrinth. Basically a fantasy romance political thriller that explores race, imperialism, and class. The physical world that is explored in this series is imaginative and a bright spot for Edwardian / Steampunk fans.
Performances by the cast are pretty good. The part that suffers is the writing, not necessarily if the concept or the world, but the plot is led from point to point by lazy shortcuts. The initial romance is a bit contrived, Philo has a friend whose role/storyline seems to make no sense or is just a time filler, and a bunch of interlinked events seem to just conveniently occur when they're needed to.
I've enjoyed movies or shows where i could get past the shortcut styled writing, but that was only because other elements like action/visuals/dialogue held my attention. Carnival Row doesn't have enough of those elements to allow me to overlook the clumsy plot holes, especially since it moves so slowly during the romance and the class/race/political conflict portions.
Overall, i think they tried to capture too many viewer segments. People into fantasy/action/crime thrillers may get bored by the class/status and romance portions, and people into romance and race/class intrigue may get turned off by the violence and gore. I prob won't be tuning into season 2.
Performances by the cast are pretty good. The part that suffers is the writing, not necessarily if the concept or the world, but the plot is led from point to point by lazy shortcuts. The initial romance is a bit contrived, Philo has a friend whose role/storyline seems to make no sense or is just a time filler, and a bunch of interlinked events seem to just conveniently occur when they're needed to.
I've enjoyed movies or shows where i could get past the shortcut styled writing, but that was only because other elements like action/visuals/dialogue held my attention. Carnival Row doesn't have enough of those elements to allow me to overlook the clumsy plot holes, especially since it moves so slowly during the romance and the class/race/political conflict portions.
Overall, i think they tried to capture too many viewer segments. People into fantasy/action/crime thrillers may get bored by the class/status and romance portions, and people into romance and race/class intrigue may get turned off by the violence and gore. I prob won't be tuning into season 2.