Carnivals are usually fun

Give me a line that doesn't sound stupid. I dare you!

Jeff Bezos apparently told his creative types that he wanted to have the "next Game of Thrones" as an Amazon original. Carnival Row is supposedly one of the first entries in that attempt to recreate the (ahem) magic of the HBO series. I can tell you right now that, if by some miracle they actually succeed in that effort with this show, I will lose what little faith I have left in humanity. It's been a while since I've seen something this bad. Yes, I know the last episode of Game of Thrones was just a few months ago, but even that had some redeeming value (Solid actors with actual roles, a decent line or two, etc.) I didn't see any whatsoever in Carnival Row.

First off, let's just assert one thing: No show is going to capture the zeitgeist the way GoT did for two reasons: 1. The multiplicity of networks means no one is watching any one thing at any given time. There's too much choice out there to capture the same size audience so that that one thing will be the only thing talked about at the office the next day. 2. Almost all of these new services are offering up entire seasons in one go. There is no designated watching time, such that you know that you and several million other people are all planted in front of your TVs at the same time (and tweeting about it at the same time...) That kind of communal activity just isn't possible when some people binge things inside 24 hours and others can only watch them over a few weeks. At the moment, Hulu is the only one attempting weekly releases to try to maintain that community tension (and, of course, show commercials.)

Wait... You want us to say what?

That asserted, there's no way that Carnival Row should become the next big hit because no one except Jeff "more money than any deity you can think of" Bezos would have been willing to pay for it. It's awful, top to bottom, from every technical perspective you can think of: acting, direction, writing (save me, Jeebus; ESPECIALLY the writing), as well as the more nuts-and-bolts stuff like lighting and basic physical functions (how dual, insect-like wings actually work, for example.)

Now, granted, you had to expect that the acting would be brutal if the lead is Orlando Bloom, whose range is essentially "pensive but wooden figure constantly trying to convince you that he actually has emotions.", but how did they trick Jared Harris and Indira Varma into this? Promise them they'd only have scenes with each other so they could feed off one another and ad-lib their way out of the awful script? Apparently not, since it was still awful when Harris was explaining- to his wife -how his job works and the status of the current legislature. Because she wouldn't know these basic things, would she? And, overall, the acting doesn't rise above the level of Bloom's emoting in front of his boss (complete with requisite fist slamming to the desk) at how much he feels for the Fae people and their plight. Could they have made this any more obvious? How about if he did the classical "baring a breast with a ready dagger" bit?

Dreary. Like pretty much everything.

But the direction was poor, too. Chase scenes are supposed to build tension, not stutter for five minutes while the two participants keep pacing each other, but that's exactly what happened as Rycroft Philostrate (Bloom) and Unseelie Jack (Matthew Gravelle) race across the rooftops. It was like trying to turn over an engine when the starter is failing. You keep feeling that something's about to happen as the car does that shudder... but then nothing. So, you try again. That's not tension. That's anticipation and despair, because the motion that you get means nothing and the motion you expect never happens. You want tension? Go watch The Bourne Identity again to see how to set up and conduct a chase scene. Oh, and the names... Rycroft Philostrate. Vignette Stonemoss. Imogen Spurnrose. Seriously? I mean, you're serious with this? It isn't fantastical enough that you have people with wings and demons living in the sewers and you think Orlando Bloom can actually act, but you have to give people names that would make each and every one of these people despise their parents?

But that's part and parcel of the worst part: the writing. It's brutal. Half of it is exposition, but even where it isn't, they have the True Detective, season 2 pattern down cold (i.e. People don't fucking talk like that!) My favorite bit was where Bloom confronts the sergeant he suspects and the latter responds: "Just what are you insinuating?" Wut? Not "What's all this about?" or "Tryin' to make a point?" or even "What are you tryin' to say here, inspector?", all delivered in standard Cockney. No, no, no. Let's reach into Webster's for the elevated term because that's the first thing that would come to mind for Average Joe Desk Sergeant. All that tells me is that, in addition to your world not being real (suspension of disbelief!), your characters aren't real, either, because they speak like someone just handed them a script, rather than how they would if they actually lived in your unreal world. JFC, Tamzin Merchant's entire role (Imogen) is exposition! Every time she opens her mouth, she's dropping facts like an almanac to people that should already be familiar with them. She even describes what we've already seen, as if we need that explained to us like her entire family history and marital status. "Carriage!" Yes, we saw that. This is the same response I'd expect from a four-year-old pointing out the window to say: "Fire truck!", because it's exciting for him and he thinks no one else saw it. But we're watching the screen (presumably), so we don't need it announced.

"I'm about to tell him what style of hat he's wearing!"

The crowner is, appropriately, the last scene, where you'd expect some more detail and, instead, are given none, presumably because the writer (René Echevarria) thought it would be "mysterious". Unseelie Jack is about to unburden himself of, y'know, everything and decides that that's the moment to drop some hints about the horrible things that he's seen and why Rycroft Philostrate(!) has no clue about the real world. It's at this point that you'd normally drop in a couple names or words that the audience won't recognize or understand so that they have something to entice them into watching the next episode (although, with this series, perhaps this is a blessing.) Think Melisandre talking about the Lord of Light/Red God/R'hllor. You don't know who that is or what its role is in Westeros, but she name-drops because it's natural to her (she lives there and, really, with the Red God) and it gives the audience something to think about, in addition to providing a little detail on the world. We get none of that from Unseelie Jack's monologue. None! It's all horrible darkness this and you won't believe what I've seen that, but we don't get one single detail about this obviously overarching plot element. So, his entire speech becomes ephemeral, as we later watch a Fae woman get devoured by something in the sewers down by the docks which, for all we know, might be a common thing in these parts... and tells us the same thing his useless speech did!

Me, too. It's called "This screenplay."

I'm not even getting into more technical detail, like how showing everything with a blue lens to make it seem "dark" also begins to make everything blend together. Or how you don't soar, as Vignette(!) does in the opening scene, with dual, halteres-type wings (think common housefly.) Or how working girls don't sleep with their johns! That's because they're working and need to move on to the next guy. If you're going to use sex as a major plot element, you might as well know how it works, yo.

I honestly can't fathom how even Amazon greenlit this thing and I've seen Britannia. Echevarria was showrunner on Terra Nova (once described as "Stargate Universe by Dr. Seuss"), if that gives you any indication at which level things are operating. But if one is trying to field the "next Game of Thrones", one certainly wouldn't start here. Aim higher.