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NEW YORK (CNS) -- Spectacular production design, starkly beautiful Czech Republic landscapes and clever special effects can't redeem "Carnival Row." English actor Orlando Bloom ("The Lord of the Rings") stars in and executive produces the excessively gory and uninteresting eight-hour limited series, which begins streaming on Amazon Friday, Aug. 30.
Veteran showrunner Rene Echevarria and screenwriter Travis Beacham created the dark fantasy series by adapting Beacham's unproduced 2005 feature film script, "A Killing on Carnival Row." The series follows the interlocking fortunes of two main characters.
The first is female Pix (short for Pixie), Vignette Stonemoss (Cara Delevingne), a 20-something refugee living in the Burgue Republic -- a thinly disguised stand-in for England. Having fled her war-torn homeland, Anoun, and survived being shipwrecked off Burgue, Vignette finds work as a servant in the mansion of seemingly respectable siblings Ezra (Andrew Gower) and Imogen (Tamzin Merchant) Spurnrose.
Ezra, who's in his 40s, and 10-years-younger Imogen, having squandered their inheritance, maintain their extravagant lifestyle, despite lacking the means to do so. Ill-equipped to live in the world without the trappings of affluence, Imogen schemes, against her better judgment, to ingratiate herself with her well-to-do new neighbor, Agreus Astrayon (David Gyasi).
A black man, he's also a Puck, which means he has a horned forehead, so that he somewhat resembles the Klingons of "Star Trek." Argeus would ordinarily be beneath contempt as far as Imogen was concerned. But his wealth makes him serviceable to the heiress in her financial plight.
Vignette, meanwhile, learns from her old friend and fellow Pix Tourmaline Larou (Karla Crome) that Rycroft Philostrate (Bloom), an erstwhile soldier with whom she fell in love back in Anoun but whom she believed to be dead, is not only alive but has become the local police inspector. As "Carnival Row" begins, Rycroft is trying to solve a series of murders in which Unseelie Jack (Matthew Gravelle) is the prime suspect.
The push-pull dynamic between Vignette and Rycroft animates the show's action. Their renewed relationship, already thorny, only grows more so when Vignette takes up with a roaming band of Pix outlaws called the Black Raven.
A steady fusillade of sexual elements, including full nudity, as well as of coarse language comes across as gratuitous. But it's the high level and graphic nature of the violence in the series that's especially troubling. Its multiple depictions of human and animal entrails splattered on the street, accompanied by long trails of blood, quickly becomes unpalatable.
With its ample doses of monsters and mayhem and titillation, "Carnival Row," some suggest, is aiming to achieve the kind of popularity won by the recently concluded HBO series "Game of Thrones." Yet, even leaving aside its lapses in taste, the bottom line is that the series is stultifyingly dull. Wise viewers will, accordingly, want to look elsewhere for entertainment.
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Byrd is a guest reviewer for Catholic News Service.