Marco Polo - The Complete First Season - Blu-ray

Content: Kublai Khan (Benedict Wong), grandson of the great Genghis Khan, rules the Mongol Empire with a harsh hand. Only the deceitful Chancellor Jia Sidao (Chin Han) and his rebel army steadfastly refuse to submit to Kublai Khan. For thirty years now, the rebels have withstood Mongol attacks in the walled city of Xiangyang. Now Kublai Khan is faced with the question of whether he should destroy the rebels once and for all, or whether he would be better off leaving them alone so that they will continue to pay tribute to him. During this time, the merchant Niccolo Polo (Pierfrancesco Favino) comes to him with a request to be allowed to expand his business along the Silk Road. In return, he would give him his son Marco Polo (Lorenzo Richelmy) as a pledge. Henceforth, Marco Polo is trained by the blind master Hundred Eyes (Tom Wu). He is to learn horseback riding, archery, writing and all sorts of other useful things in order to serve Kublai Khan. Combined with the knowledge he acquired on his three-year journey through Mongolia and his very special way of seeing things, Marco is supposed to help the king to better rule over his country. And suddenly Marco finds himself in a dangerous adventure, the scale of which he could never have imagined in his wildest dreams.

With the historical series Marco Polo, the streaming service Netflix has staged a truly mammoth project. With a budget of over $90 million, the ten-part first season is the most expensive TV series in the world after Game of Thrones. And even with the mix of intrigue, sex and bloody battles, the series clearly takes its cue from the HBO hit. But the class is not reached. For that, the scripts are simply not polished enough and the characters are drawn too template-like. Nevertheless, the adventure series has enough entertainment and show values to compensate for dramaturgical weaknesses. The first two episodes were directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, who caused a stir with the Oscar-nominated film Kon-Tiki and will bring the fifth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean series to theaters in 2017. The duo has a first-rate grasp of creating grand adventure scenarios, which they do very well with Marco Polo. With this, they set a successful foundation for a first season that even increases in quality towards the end.

It takes a bit to warm up to the characters and get into the story. The first episodes are too busy ticking off every cliché imaginable, while also laying out the rather complex web of plot. But it's worth it to stay on the ball. Because after four episodes at the latest, it's clear: this series is really fun. It not only offers a lot for the eye, but is also exciting and extremely rousing implemented. Spiced with a pinch of humor, it is also well prevented in some places that the series takes itself too seriously and thus drifts into unintentional comedy. And if it is then dramaturgically but a little too thick, there are still the well-executed special effects (right in the first minutes, there is a big sandstorm, which is really great for TV standards), which can distract from it.

Who likes big battles and martial arts, which also comes here at his expense. All of these positives allow an epic saga to build over the course of the ten episodes, leaving you wanting more after the gripping season finale. Even if in some moments the packaging is more handsome than the actual content, Marco Polo is a very successful historical series that fans of visually stunning adventure dramas should not miss. Absolutely worth seeing!

Picture + Sound: The technical implementation of the series leaves a more than convincing impression. The image sharpness is on a very high level. Even in darker scenes, quality losses are barely noticeable. In addition, the completely trouble-free visual implementation convinces especially in the great landscape shots with a good image depth and an atmospheric color scheme. The sound is in no way inferior. The numerous surround effects, especially in the fight scenes, are excellently implemented and provide a good spatiality even in quieter scenes. All this and the good tuning of the voices and film music allow only one conclusion here: very good!

Extras: On the discs 1 and 2 are plenty of extras. Starting off on the first Blu-ray is over 47 minutes of cut scenes from each episode. Among them are some well worth watching moments that, while not fundamentally affecting the plot, wouldn't have really slowed down the narrative flow either. In addition, the disc has a short making of the title sequence (approx. 1:41 min.) to offer.

Continue on Disc 2 with an extensive documentary on the historical background of the series (approx. 38:02 min.). After some rather amusing bloopers (approx. 3:22 min.), interested viewers get a deeper look at the series' martial arts techniques (approx. 7:30 min.), the actors' fight training (approx. 12 min.), as well as the visual effects (approx. 2:56 min.). Finally, there is a comparison sequence of concepts and their final implementation (approx. 3:07 min.), as well as two image galleries.

Conclusion: Marco Polo is one of the most expensive TV series of all time - and it shows in the historical epic. It's true that the scripts and character writing can only stand up to comparison with other high-quality series like Game of Thrones to a limited extent. But even if a little too many clichés are served here, the first season offers, on balance, really first-class entertainment. The Blu-ray presents the ten episodes in very good picture and sound quality and also has all sorts of worthwhile extras to offer. For this there is a very clear: Absolutely recommendable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp