![]() As shot by Daniel Minahan (who’s handled a few episodes of Game of Thrones and Homeland), the sight of thousands of Chinese Swallows, alight with flames and darting through the night sky to set fire to a nearby village, is wondrously creepy. In season 2’s opening shot, the show flashes back to Kublai’s childhood, where his grandfather guides him in the art of crude yet clever warfare. ![]() On the positive side, that means it’s still got style. And, unfortunately, with a lot of the same problems. It recovers its stride eventually, but anyone who wasn’t already into Marco’s adventures helping raise – and potentially decimate – the Mongol Empire won’t be won over by a second year that’s, by and large, exactly the same as the first. But it had style, with neat action set pieces and an unpretentious tackling of the medieval-sex-and-gore genre – which feels all but necessitated by every network thanks to Game of Thrones – resulting in a show that was palatable for me, despite being somewhat of an overall mess.Ĭut to today, and it’s been a year-and-a-half since I was entrenched in all of the political turmoil between the the great Kublai Khan (Benedict Wong, still fascinating when the script lets him be) and his nemesis chancellor Jia Sidao, or knew the difference between Karakoram and Xiangyang, or remembered what our intrepid hero Marco Polo (Lorenzo Richelmy) is doing with rebel assassin Mei Lin (Olivia Cheng) in his custody. That break hurts the show, momentarily, in its opening season 2 hours, more than any simple recap video could alleviate, especially for a series that relies so heavily on plodding, exposition-laced dialogue to move things forward. A lot didn’t work (it’s hard to overstate that), including thin characterization, thinner world building and clunky, utterly un-bingeable plotting. ![]() It’s been 18 months since Marco Polo debuted its first season on Netflix, and even though it hit with a bit of a resounding dud, the show had its apologists and I was one of them.
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