Critic Reviews

Ultimately, once viewers overcome the sluggish pace there’s something for everyone with Marco Polo. History lovers will enjoy Googling along with the series as historical names and battles are introduced while martial arts fans will appreciate the intricately choreographed fight scenes. Although the series isn’t as riveting as “Game of Thrones,” strong performances and impeccable visuals make it worthy of a watch on a slow and rainy afternoon.

A fun, body-flinging, old-fashioned epic.... As Kublai Khan, British actor Benedict Wong gives an impressive performance, one of the best of the year: You absolutely believe his ruthlessness, his power and his calculating thoughtfulness. As Marco Polo, on the other hand, Italian actor Lorenzo Richelmy, who looks like a more lyrical Emile Hirsch, mostly has to be put up with.

Marco Polo's pilot blows. The premise is stale, a riff on the Western-white-guilt stranger-in-a-strange-land-goes-native genre.... Somewhere in the middle of episode 2, though, Marco Polo becomes surprisingly watchable. The filmmaking becomes bolder.

Marco Polo flits between storytelling styles without completely tying them together as successfully as "Game of Thrones" does.... By the fifth and sixth episodes the action picks up, the intrigue deepens and the stakes some higher.

Beautiful but dull, at least in the early going.

Shot primarily in Kazakhstan and Malaysia, the series is richly atmospheric, lavishly produced, and artfully rendered. But you may find that the whole is less than the sum of its parts. It doesn't work nearly as well as drama as it does as sheer spectacle.

The lavishly produced, and reportedly mega-expensive, Marco Polo can be a feast for the eyes, even when the overripe dialogue ("Treachery grows well in the fertile soil of contempt I tilled") and uneven performances feel dramatically undernourished.

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. And, unfortunately, with a lot of the same problems. On the positive side, that means it’s still got style.

Marco Polo doesn’t stack up to the political maneuverings and bloody battles within the Seven Kingdoms, and so often resembles George R.R. Martin fan-fiction, it seems wiser to revisit the superior show.

Good-looking--also lethargic, languid, listless and a little bit lifeless--at least in the early going.