Hmmm... I came so close to dumping "Carnival Row". What saved it was the fact that there were only eight episodes. By the end, the finale was just about interesting enough to drag me back for the already commissioned second season.
Following a War for control of their lands, an increasing population of creatures meet poverty and prejudice as they arrive in The Burgh (a close proxy for Victorian London) as refugees. One of these refugees, Vignette (Cara Delavigne) arrives in the city and discovers that her former lover, a soldier during the war, is not dead, as she thought but now a Detective in the Burgh Police. The Detective, Philo (Orlando Bloom) has his life is turned upside down by the arrival of Vignette, but also by a grisly series of Murders that is the talk of the Row.
So why did I nearly give up on the series. Frankly, because for all the fantasy elements, the show is somewhat dull. The different races are fairly obvious substitutes for real world comparisons and much of the show involves their interactions with the upper classes of humans. Honestly, I've seen all this done before and more convincingly. There are three main strands to the season's arc, two of them become connected as the season runs on. . . (speaking of which, if you honestly can't guess who's behind the murders in the first couple of episodes then I have some magic beans to sell you). A third plot strand, involving The Spurnrose siblings and their neighbour is only ever tangentially linked and, despite being nicely acted, feels like filler. Vignette's time in The Burgh also feels like it's done to pad the show out, as she gets a maid's job and then joins a gang - both of which feel like just giving her something to do, particularly when you look back on the season after it's finished.
I did warm to Orlando Bloom's Inspector as the series wore on, after initial scepticism about whether the "tough cop routine" was really suited to him. Cara Delavigne is probably the best she's been in anything in this and despite the criticism in other reviews, I thought her accent was pretty solid - the character though could use something real to do. I liked the Cthulhu elements of the plot, and wished that it had leaned a little more into that.
The last couple of episodes dragged me back in enough to earn the positive score and probably ensure I'll be back for the next run.