Entertainment Weekly – September 01, 2019

Carnival Row

This is well-trodden genre

territory, presenting fantastical

creatures as persecuted outcasts

(see: all things X-Men), and Carnival

Row—created by René Echevarria

(The 4400) and Travis Beacham

(Pacific Rim)—generally sticks

to the usual plot devices. Philo is

a brooding hero with a Big Secret,

one that involves his former fae

lover Vignette (Delevingne). She,

meanwhile, is shocked to discover

he didn’t die in the war.

Amid the pastiche and the

occasionally banal writing are some

charming stories. My favorite

involves the snooty, insolvent

Imogen Spurnrose (Tazmin Mer-

chant), who reluctantly falls for

the wealthy “puck” (a goat-man

hybrid) next door; it’s like Pride

and Prejudice and Satyrs. And

Game of Thrones’ Indira Varma has

a ball as Piety Breakspear (these

character names!), the conniving

wife to a critch-friendly politician

(Jared Harris).

At times the mythology can feel

needlessly complex, but there is

something endearing about Carni-

val’s earnest, irony-free story telling.

Oddly, this splashy production built

around a movie star and a former

model feels like an underdog, a

Cones of Dunshire-style labor of

love on a Jack Ryan budget. B–

IF A GROUP OF HARDCORE GENRE

fans wrote a TV show, and then

somebody’s rich Uncle Jeff (Bezos)

Venmo’d them several million dollars

to produce it, the result might be

Carnival Row. Amazon’s fantasy-

thriller (starring Orlando Bloom and

Cara Delevingne as unlikely lovers)

is a knotty, nerdy, and sincere para-

ble about xenophobia, with plenty

of interspecies sex to satisfy viewers.

As we learn from a text-on-screen

preamble, the “fae” (a.k.a. fairy

people) spent years defending their

homeland from humans, who

sought to control it. Now the war is

over, and fae refugees—fleeing the

brutal persecution of a group called

the Pact—are pouring into the

Burgue, a sooty city that looks a lot

like Victorian London, but with

more goat people. A vocal political

movement decries the influx of

newcomers, and tensions are raised

further by a series of attacks on

“critch” (a slur for nonhuman folk).

It’s up to Inspector Rycroft “Philo”

Philostrate (Bloom) to find the mas-

termind before he strikes again.

DAT E Launches Aug. 30

NETWORK

+ TIME Amazon Prime Video Streaming

REVIEW BY Kristen Baldwin

@KristenGBaldwin

↓ Carnies: Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne

JAN

(^) TH
IJS
/AM
AZ
ON

“COMPLETELY

ADDICTIVE.”

—SARA SHEPARD,

#1 New York Times

bestselling author of Pretty Little Liars

and The Perfectionists

Glamorous.

Powerful.

ROYAL.

Art © 2019 by Carolina Melis

Learn more at

GETUNDERLINED.COM

@GETUNDERLINED