Carnival Row episode 2 review: Great when it doesn’t take itself so seriously

Amazon’s epic fantasy still doesn’t know quite what it wants to be, but Carnival Row works much better as a soap than a serious drama.

Here’s something you might not know: When Amazon’s Carnival Row stops trying to be so serious, it’s honestly a darn good time.

I know, I know, this is the era of Peak TV. Everything has to look gritty, and be vaguely poorly lit, and tackle serious topics with gravitas and no one is ever allowed to smile. And, yes, Carnival Row contains elements of all those things. But those are the weakest and least interesting parts of the show by far.

(Seriously, how do you cast Orlando Bloom of all people as dour, tortured detective Philo, who obviously has a huge heart, but has forgotten how to laugh?)

In true Game of Thrones-esque fashion, “Aisling” contains a grisly murder, a gruesome autopsy and an unnecessary animal vivisection, with lots of blood and literal guts everywhere. There’s a violent attempted rape sequence. Vignette joins a gang of streetlevel faeries who introduce themselves by killing a girl they claim they can’t trust. And then there’s all the blatant racism everywhere.

It’s all pretty darn dark, and not in a terribly subtle way. (Spoiler alert: This is not the show to watch if you’re looking for nuance.) But, the thing is, it doesn’t really have to be, and it’s tiresome to see so much evidence that all the brutal murder and rape is a deliberate choice.

Carnival Row is deeply ridiculous in many ways, but it’s precisely those elements that make the show entertaining. This is a series that desperately wants you to think it’s a Serious Drama, when what it actually is a fairytale soap opera, with all the secrets, betrayals and over the top reaction shots you could ever want in a series.

This thing should be basically be camp city, and when it is, it soars.

Tamzin Merchant is the unsung hero of this show, portraying Imogen Spurnrose as a shallow, selfish, manipulative hot mess who’s openly racist towards fae folk yet appears to be strangely drawn towards her new rich puck neighbor. (After she tries to have him thrown out of the neighborhood for not being human, of course.) Plus, she has to contend with her sniveling loser of a brother whose basically lost the family fortune in what feels like something awfully close to a fairy slave trade.

In short: The Spurnroses are precisely what I want out of a story like this.

There’s also Piety Breakspear (played with scene-stealing glee by Indira Varma of Thrones fame), the conniving wife of the Chancellor of the Burgh, who has kidnapped her own son – the basically worthless Jonah – in order to frame her husband’s political enemies for the crime. It’s a next level move worth of Cersei Lannister, and something that immediately marks her character as someone worth paying attention to in this world.

Jared Harris is out here doing his earnest best as fae-friendly Chancellor Absalom Breakspear, but “Ainsling” also hints at darker secrets in his past. Apparently he and his wife were brought together thanks to the machinations of a faery witch, who also happened to predict that he and his son would go on to do great and greater things, respectively. And Piety is ready to start some stuff to make sure that all comes true.

Addendum: The Breakspears are also exactly what I want out of a show like this.

What I don’t need?

The ongoing faery murder mystery that seems to be trying to uncomfortably straddle a line between realism and fantasy. In the same episode, detailed conversations over an unnecessarily naked dead body in the morgue take place while characters are arguing about whether some kind of “dark god” might be stalking faery folk in the Row.

It’s awfully hard to hold both these worlds together in one hand, and the show would honestly be better off it if picked a side and ran with it.

Furthermore, as much as I am, on paper, in favor of this whole star-crossed romantic history thing going on between Philo and Vignette, they’re also exhausting together.

Vignette’s rage, at least, is understandable, as her ex literally let her think he was dead for over a half dozen years for no real reason that I can see. Philo’s motivations are…murkier. Clearly, he’s not exactly over her, given that he buys her freedom from indentured servitude and allows her to escape with the constabulary flag during the truly bizarre sequence in which she must steal something to prove her worth to her new underworld gang. (Although, admittedly, Vignette’s grand plan of simply flying up to the top of the room to steal the flag and assuming no one would see or hear her extremely loud and obvious wings is the sort of unintentional hilarity I live for.)

Oh, Carnival Row. I’m really in properly this now, aren’t I?

All episodes of Carnival Row are now streaming on Amazon.