92 Time Sept. 2–9, 2019
TELEVISION
Fantasy shows vie to be
the next Game of Thrones
By Judy Berman
AfTer such A disAppoinTing conclusion, iT’s eAsy To
forget how good Game of Thrones once was. In the first epi-
sode, we were introduced to the stoic but just and loving Stark
clan. By the end, we’d met the swaggering Lannisters, the anx-
ious king, the exiled Targaryens plotting revolution. We’d wit-
nessed Daenerys’ orgiastic wedding and watched the incestu-
ous twins Cersei and Jaime throw Bran out a window. There
were White Walkers, direwolves, a virtuosic girl archer.
Like many episodes in Thrones’ early seasons, that first
episode is a study in good fantasy storytelling: It builds an ex-
pansive, enthralling alternate world while quickly establish-
ing conflicts absorbing enough to hold our attention. It’s rel-
evant and escapist at once, using the supernatural conventions
of the genre to reframe real, resonant human problems. Now
that the search is on for the next Thrones, the bar has been set
high for two much-anticipated fantasy series that will debut on
Aug. 30: Amazon’s Carnival Row and Netflix’s The Dark Crys-
tal: Age of Resistance. Neither show clears it.
Crystal at least gets the world-building part right. Like
the cult classic 1982 Jim Henson movie, this prequel is set on
Thra, an imaginary planet powered by a giant magenta crystal
that teems with Muppet-y mythical creatures. Committed to
re- creating the look of the original, Netflix bankrolled a lavish
live-action production built in the Jim Henson Creature Shop.
The visual detail is astounding, from the puppets’ ornate
hairstyles to an immersive backdrop of enchanted forests,
imposing castles and cave cities constructed in miniature.
This alone might be enough to satisfy the film’s fans,
but the story lags behind. The original Crystal’s quest
narrative—a Gelfling, perhaps the last of his elfin kind,
must challenge Thra’s evil vulture like rulers, the Skeksis—
The elflike Gelflings
return in The Dark
Crystal: Age of
Resistance
▽wasn’t anything special, but it still suf-
ficed as an excuse to explore a stunning
new world. Age of Resistance follows
three Gelflings as they discover that
their Skeksis overlords are only pretend-
ing to be benevolent. But because each
of the heroes hails from a different clan,
in a society with strict hierarchies, they
must overcome those divisions before
they can team up to resist their feudal
masters.
The premise is more fantasy boiler-
plate, though it does resonate in divi-
sive times. The real problem is the pac-
ing; the show spends so much time
panning over landscapes and watching
puppets hang out that you can start to
lose the plot. It takes nearly half of the
10- episode season to get the quest set up.
Who has time for that?Despite the presence of several
Thrones stars (Nathalie Emmanuel,
Natalie Dormer, Lena Headey) in
Crystal’s stellar voice cast, it’s Carnival
Row that really courts the HBO hit’s
audience. A grownup fantasy with
prestige trappings—a cast led by
Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne,
a timely political agenda, weird sex
aplenty—it transposes the current
immigration crisis on an alternate-
universe Victorian England inundated
with fae, fauns and other mythical races
displaced by poverty and proxy wars.
Delevingne’s feisty fairy and Bloom’s
righteous police detective are our entry
points into what is by turns a Jack the
Ripper riff, an Austen- style comedy of
manners and a dark political thriller
(starring the great Jared Harris), with a
Dickensian street gang and a fairy
brothel thrown in for kicks. These
story lines rarely intersect with one
another or with the show’s themes of
anti- imperialism and tolerance in a way
that justifies the collage of references.
And hacky dialogue (“Oh, come now,Thrones was a master class in how
to execute fantasy, Carnival Row is
its opposite—a cautionary tale
for fabulists who figure that
any old combination of reality
and magic will do. TimeOff Reviews
◁ Carnival Row casts Bloom and
Delevingne in a dark fairy tale