One of the events Amazon of the year has come, we can finally find it on Prime Video Carnival Row, the highly anticipated series that sees the return to fantasy of Orlando Bloom in Rycroft Philostrate, a human investigator tormented by dark secrets, alongside a perfectly fitting Cara Delevigne as Vignette Stonemoss, a fairy on the run from her hometown. The expectations were so high that a second season was planned even before the release of the initial episode.
Fantasy or Noir?
We are in the fictional city of Burges in an unspecified time, but everything makes us think that in the setting the writers René Echevarria e Travis Beacham they were inspired by a Victorian London with vaguely Steampunk references. In this gray and smoky city, where human beings and various magical creatures hardly coexist, brutal murders have been taking place for some time without an apparent connection, and it is precisely the investigator Philostrate to have to deal with it, while fighting with a dark and mysterious past, on which he himself does not seem to have clear ideas, but which still haunts him.
Its path is crossed by Vignette, a fairy with a strong and rebellious character, who immediately rejects the outcast role that humans have imposed on magical creatures and tries to survive as best she can. The attraction between the two (who had already had an affair in the past) will soon be reborn and together they will have to face not only prejudices and their ghosts of the past, but also a frightening enemy greater than them.
A remarkable cast
To shine with regard to the acting aspect, it is not so much the protagonists, but rather the secondary characters who manage to stand out without any effort on an Orlando Bloom quite flat and inexpressive it's a Cara Delevigne decidedly little empathetic.
So here's a sweet but strong one Karla Crome (Misfits, Under The Dome) who plays the whore Tourmaline, Vignette's best friend; an enigmatic as well as intriguing David Gyasi (Cloud Atlas, Interstellar) as a faun so rich that he could risk entering good human society; it's still Tamzin Merchant, Indira varma, Jared Harris e Andrew Gower, all excellent in their roles as (not so much) secondary characters.
A wasted opportunity
Se taken individually, all the elements of this series are good or even excellent: actors of a certain level (the return of Orlando Bloom to a fantasy screenplay is not a trivial matter), remarkable direction by Jon Amiel, interesting original script (if even Guillermo Del Toro he wanted to make a film of it before it became a TV series there must have been a reason) and the rather realistic and well-made computer graphics, yet, overall, there is something that is out of place, that does not convince, as in a recipe with dosed ingredients bad.
Alchemy between the protagonists is almost non-existent, in the background of the story are inserted elements of political criticism also to our reality, which however are not deepened, as well as the various narrative strands that seem to witness from time to time as in a hit and run, barely leaving us time to empathize with the characters and really feel like you are inside the story.
Conclusions
Probably the flaw of this series is just that: however much you try to immerse yourself in the narrative, all of it a variety of reasons prevent us from establishing an emotional connection with the characters, relegating us to the mere role of spectators. We remain so confused in front of the various register changes, impassive in the scenes of pathos (especially in those between Phil and Vignette) and paradoxically we manage to become more attached to secondary characters such as Tourmaline or Agreus.
Despite this, if the purpose is to spend a few hours of leisure and, or you are simply curious about the performance of Bloom and Delevigne, you will not be disappointed (as long as you don't have too high expectations).
