INTRODUCING: Carnival Row

As Amazon Prime’s big-budget drama arrives on the on demand service, here’s our guide to the sprawling world of this dark fantasy starring Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne…

What’s it about? Filmed in the Czech Republic, this eight-parter unfolds in a noirish world that feels like a Victorian Earth, and is set not long after a war in which humans left the world’s magical creatures – once their staunch allies – undefended against a vicious enemy known as The Pact. The Carnival Row of the title is a seedy area in the humans’ capital city, The Burgue, which has become a refuge for the ‘fae’, or magical creatures, left homeless by the war. These include faeries, many of whom end up in brothels, and the goatlike pucks, some of whom work as domestic servants. All this immigration has created a lot of tension with the humans. Who’s in it? Orlando Bloom stars as Burgue Detective Rycroft Philostrate, a decent-looking sort who carries a secret and is probing a string of grisly murders. Rycroft is the ex of Vignette Stonemoss (Cara Delevingne, left), a feisty faerie who arrives in The Burgue thinking Rycroft died during the war. The wider cast includes Jared Harris and Indira Varma as scheming aristocrats, and Tamzin Merchant as a stuck-up heiress. What’s it like to watch? There’s a lot to understand in part one but, after that, it becomes a gripping mix of Ripper Street and Lord Of The Rings, with less violence and sex than Game Of Thrones. There will be a season two.