Netflix released Marco Polo, a new, ten-episode original series on Friday. I’m pretty sure that I’m the target audience. I listen to approximately seven billion different history podcasts, for instance. I fenced in college. [AHAHAHAAHAHAAAAAAA!!!!—editors] I own multiple editions of the Monster Manual. I will watch basically anything with Kung Fu in it. I am the exact kind of dork who would look at Marco Polo and think “Yes, I need to stuff that into my brain,” and promptly plowed the first six episodes into my eyes and ears.
Opinions and such after the jump.
Marco Polo ostensibly tells the story of, well, Marco Polo, a 13th century Venetian who became BFFs with Kublai Khan. One thing that Marco Polo does well, though, is that plenty of it isn’t actually about Marco Polo. A show about a (usually white) man in an alien culture can very easily use that whole culture only as an auxiliary to the main guy’s character development. Dances With Wolves, for example, isn’t all that interested in Native American culture in and of itself. Instead, it’s interested in a foreign culture insofar as it affects the personal journey of the white dude protagonist. Netflix’s series does dip into this territory now and again (there are some cringe-inducing scenes where Polo learns Kung Fu from a blind martial artist who is essentially Chinese Daredevil, for instance) but for the most part it goes out of its way to not be The Last Samurai or Shogun. That’s good, I guess.
The central arc of season one is all about Kublai Khan trying to take out the last remnants of the Song Dynasty (because conquering) and one city dares to remain unconquered by the Mongols. The show tries to paint both sides in shades of grey. The Khan’s court is a multiethnic affair that welcomes Chinese, Persians, Arabs, and even weird white people like Marco. Kublai himself is presented as more of a canny politician than a bloodthirsty warlord. However, he still is convinced that he should rule the world just because, and he’s totally happy to execute people for tax evasion. Stuff’s complicated.
The Song, the show’s central antagonists, aren’t nearly as well sketched. One of them, the former empress, is portrayed as the reasonable one who likes diplomacy, and another, a prince, is the nasty dude who likes war and wants to fight. That’s it. There’s an attempt at complexity, but it doesn’t really seem interesting.
With the large cast and tons of blood, it’s fairly apparent that Marco Polo really, really wants to be Netflix’s version of Game of Thrones. The politics, swords, nudity, brutality, and gratuitous sex all invite comparison to HBO’s fantasy flagship. Unfortunately, Game of Thrones has a few things that Marco Polo doesn’t, like writing and character development. A goodly portion of the dialogue is delivered in that kind of stilted, staid voice that says “WE ARE TALKING ABOUT IMPORTANT HISTORY THINGS,” and it all ends up sounding deeply unnatural. One of my roommates compared it to high schoolers trying to recite Shakespeare with inappropriately solemn intonation, and he’s absolutely right. Not nearly enough of the characters sound like actual humans. Instead, they sound declaratory and weird.
Also, at one point the Hashshashins show up, Marco and his Mongol buddy follow them, and then they get high and have weird Burning Man sex with some ladies who don't exist. It was a bit odd.
There are gems in the series. Benedict Wong seems to be having a great time as Kublain Khan, a leader who constantly teeters between his Mongolian heritage and the Chinese culture that he has come to adopt at his court. Several of the fight scenes are as good as anything from a big-screen martial arts movie, and the show obviously gives a damn. It’s big, loud, ambitious, and Netflix is very clearly shouting to the rooftops about how they, too, can make a big-budget battle/politics/sex spectacle where there’s lots of intrigue and fucking and then everyone dies.
Despite all of the fairly glaring flaws, I’m happy that this show exists. I binge watched the first six episodes while slowly sinking into my couch, and I’ll probably stick the last four into my brain when I have a free evening. Even though Marco Polo is a show with all of the seams and flaws showing, it’s at least nice to watch it try. But, then again, I’m the target audience for this shit.