The world of 13th-century Mongolia is a beautiful, twisted spectrum of contrasts. Sparkling palaces and bustling cities tower over the burnt cinders of villages while crows feast on bodies hung from stakes. It’s this place of beauty and terror, that Netflix’s latest original finds itself in. A series of slow, methodical, and infrequently gripping, I fear that Marco Polo is as much a riddle as its hero.
Marco Polo, then, is about the famed explorer’s early years as part of Kublai Khan’s court and his relationship with the Khan himself. In a series with this many beheadings and sex-fueled orgies, I wondered aloud how long Marco Polo took to get going. It takes about four or five episodes for the characters surrounding Polo to rise above just being assorted scowling faces and gruff voices in the Khan’s service and develop into more rounded characters, and for Polo to slink into the background a bit allowing others to become the focus. A large part of that, I feel, has to do with Polo himself being the least engaging character.
Polo, played here by Italian actor Lorenzo Richelmy, is abandoned by his father in a foreign land where he makes an enemy of the Khan’s sneering critics while catching the eye of many a fair maiden. A handsome stranger in a strange, new world, Richelmy’s Polo does little to convince me that his inclusion’s little more than a formality from the pilot onward and how he becomes the target of both jealously and love I’ll never know. For Richelmy’s Polo, it’s enough that he be an observer – as is his character’s prerogative – but it’s equally disappointing that he doesn’t seem to aspire to anything more.
Richelmy’s performance is neither hot nor cold under lackluster direction and his “fish out of water” story follows plenty of many familiar beats – forbidden loves, telling friends from foes, and uncomfortable bits of culture shock. It’s all well and good that at least one, stomach-churning scene with a hot branding iron has him face a hard choice between survival and family, but with that exception, Marco Polo’s left keeping his head above water, narratively speaking.
It would be easy to regard the series as “Netflix’s Game of Thrones” in its sheer size and scope – but the similarities stop with the era and globe-trotting. Polo lacks the wit and bite of Thrones’ words while its more reserved poise often falls back on predictable tropes of sex, violence, and intrigue; and it has the former two in spades. It being Netflix though, we can never be sure what rubric it’s using for success. Reviews? Ratings? Subscribers? All we know here is that Marco Polo was made to grow the streaming service’s international audience, and if its facts and figures line up in the end, it might just accomplish that. Given Polo’s hefty $90 million dollar price tag, “good” can seem like a rather low bar to aspire to when considering the blockbuster proportions put into this extravagant project.
Marco Polo, unlike the man of its namesake, has loads of offer if one knows where to look. The sets, the landscapes, the impeccable wardrobes of its actors – they all beautifully immerse you in the ancient scenery it tries to capture. The show beautifully realizes the majestic heights of China’s Imperial City and Khan’s Forbidden Palace provides a suitably intimidating presence for the man who occupies it. Their clever theatrics can’t hide their attempts to dress up a weak script filled with clichés, but it’s devotion to detail all an appreciated undertaking, namely in its fight scenes.
Polo, as part of his stay in the Khan’s court, is made to train with Tom Wu’s stoic monk, Bayan. “Hundred Eyes,” as he’s so aptly called, can kick anyone’s butt in the entire empire hard enough to think of him as nearly invincible. His training, in which there’s some wonderfully choreographed Kung Fu, is made all the more mysterious (and slightly supernatural) by the fact that Bayan is also blind. His blindness comes with its price late in the season, but that even a warrior like him is mortal brings an added sobriety to the absurd violence onscreen – if not at the expense of being another kung-fu movie trope. In a court brimming with lies and backstabbing, it’s Bayan that sees clearest thanks in part to Wu’s quiet charisma.
The characters who effectively shape Marco Polo as it progresses undoubtedly include Zhu Zhu’s headstrong Kokachin, who’s nothing but a pretty face deflecting Polo’s kind flirtations at first, but lands a fun, fulfilling role that spins her entire character around. It’s Uli Latukefu’s Byamba, the Khan’s bastard offspring, who’s Marco’s one true friend in a cesspool of backstabbers, and I like to think that it’s when the two are sent out to track down the reclusive master of the Khan’s attackers, the ninja-like Hashashin assassins, that the show really starts to pick up. This story, and the Kokachin twist, arrived in time to pique my waning interest only to disappear once more. Marco Polo, it seems, extends the same mystery, sharing its heart only to conceal it.
At the heart of it all is Benedict Wong’s regal Kublai Khan – a conflicted ruler whose wife, Empress Chabi (Joan Chen), is the only witness to his various doubts. He is also a surrogate father figure to all those in his employ; the uneasy result of the parents he’s murdered and the children’s he’s orphaned and something that surrounds him mostly by men he’s caused great pain, but who also want to please him. Wong slips on the role like a glove, so much at times as to wonder why Marco Polo isn’t titled “Khan.” It’s his own understanding of miserable patriarchs who disappoint their sons that brings him to accept young Polo, and it’s Polo’s own daddy issues draw him to the Khan. Together, the two make up a fascinating dichotomy, of captor and prisoner (or father and son) that I only want to see more of.
Treachery and deceit follow the series at every turn like something of a fanged soap opera by the eventual endgame. At home, for Polo, it’s the Khan’s son, Prince Jingim (Remy Hii), who causes the most worry. Jingim, who’s one of the lesser elements of the show, is so fixated in his self-doubt and pettiness that other characters aren’t shy to tell him that he comes off like an envious twerp. Like everything else here, his issue with Polo can be boiled down to a competition for the Khan’s love – never realizing that Kublai has taken Polo into his confidence because Polo has no agenda or allegiances.
Chin Han, whom viewers may remember as The Dark Knight’s Lao, takes center stage as the oily Jia Sidao, the cruel, ambitious chancellor of the Song Dynasty. He, like so many others, becomes more than just a one-note character over the course of the season, and despite all his wicked efforts to rise to power, the show still has to resort to him foot-binding a little girl to pass him off as a real piece of work. Even taking some creative liberties, Sidao makes for a fine series antagonist from a historical standpoint. It’s through him, and through Wu, that a particularly gratifying Kung Fu fight comes about, fast and deadly enough to make Neo blush. It should follow that an awesome Kung Fu-fueled moment in the finale that demands a standing ovation. Naturally, it all has little to do with Polo, though.
Olivia Cheng’s Mei Lin, Sidao’s sister and reputable “consort,” lives out a bit of a saga in her own right with a story that turns several times, including a huge moment at the end of the sixth installment, White Moon. This, plus that fact that the second half of the season holds several mysteries regarding who behind the scenes might be working against the Khan, made for a nice break from Polo (not fully, of course) for two or three episodes toward the end.
Time is then the strangest essence for a series in which it stands still. Patience, a virtue that so many modern TV viewers, namely Netflix watchers, have so little of may be Marco Polo’s Achilles Heel. It’ll be up to you whether you feel like slogging through a handful of hour-long episodes before things get interesting. By the end, an effective story had been told, some awesome Kung Fu showdowns were witnessed, and the show’s open credits theme echoed stubbornly in my brain. Indistinguishable side characters at the start had been given motivations and layers and Polo himself had become somewhat of an afterthought.
You might be right in saying the show’s a bit of a snoozer in its infancy; it’s only until the back half of the season that you bite into its juicy center. In ten episodes, I couldn’t help but feel that taste was just as bittersweet for the hours it took to move past the mundanity for the real show to shine. It’s a shame that its very protagonist should be the largest barrier to that feat, because by the season’s finale, it’s as if Marco Polo’s adventures had only just begun.
That Marco Polo is a double-edged sword is its weakness and strength alike. Quiet yet powerful, slow yet meaningful, its triumphs are small, and fulfilling in time. “Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys,” Sun Tzu once wrote in the Art of War. “Look upon them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death.” Marco Polo rewards its viewers in the same manner. The Great Wall wasn’t built in a day, and neither will Marco Polo in a season, but I suspect it may in a second if Netflix does intend to conquer your screen.
All ten episodes of Marco Polo are available for streaming on demand only on Netflix.