Carnival Row Series Review
For those who thirst for steampunk-themed storytelling, Carnival Row has been a godsend. Visually powerful with decent special effects, Amazon Prime’s TV series started out well, building up an interesting world with engaging characters forced into difficult situations.
Whenever the storyline stayed in the Burgue, or more specifically the Row, the show hummed with promise. The flashbacks to the war illuminated the pasts of the main characters and promised something meatier than what we ultimately got.
Unfortunately, much of season 2 and the series finale fall victim to unnecessary overreach on the part of the show’s creators. The awkward expansion of the narrative horizon to faraway Ragusa ultimately proves a serious mistake. The New Dawn and its weird doppelganger-like resemblance to 1930s Soviet Russia feels too manufactured, right down to the overdosed, on-the-nose discussions of socialist ideals and the obviously totalitarian state operating under its utopian veneer.
Mostly derivative and distracting for the breadth of season 2, the struggles of the odd couple of Imogen and Agreus seem little more than annoying misfires as the series climax approaches; one can hardly wait to escape their wealth-gilded, “racism is bad” miseries and find relief in the filthy yet vibrant Row.
By throwing in the genre kitchen sink for season 2, the unique voice of Carnival Row got lost in the mix, proving that a TV show can’t stay on course when its creators try to mesh a noirish murder mystery, a supernatural monster hunt, a fantasy world beset by communism, a ghetto rebellion and a parliamentary/diplomatic thriller all at once. Everything blurs, so much so that what is supposed to be a big character reveal (the human form of the Sparas) at the end of the penultimate episode comes off as confusingly unimportant.
Carnival Row performed best in the tight, misty confines of the wonderfully realized Row; the story should have remained with gruff Philo, wily Vignette and earnest Tourmaline struggling with life and love in the torchlit alleys, battling killer creatures of the gloaming like the Haruspex, Darkasher and Sparas.
Pulled in all directions, the series climax splinters apart rather than congealing into a solid gut-punch of an ending. Carnival Row should have remained in the Row.
Series Rating: B-
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