TV Review- Nautilus

 

Nearly twenty years ago the successful revival of Doctor Who led to a number of attempts to replicate that success with fantasy themed adventures that were suitable for a family audience, often resurrecting iconic characters (Robin Hood, Sinbad) or scenarios (Atlantis, Primeval). Nautilus would probably have fitted in then just fine as a weekly scheduled show on BBC or ITV. Thrown into the lion’s den of streaming it stands little chance of progressing especially after Disney who had signed up to distribute it dropped out after production was finished. For a while it looked like it might never be seen till Amazon Prime and the Australian company Stan snapped it up. In way though the damage to its reputation was probably already done. People were thinking – if Disney didn’t think it was good enough to show, how bad must it be? It’s a shame because Nautilus is actually really good.

 

Created by Jules Verne, Captain Nemo has always been an interesting yet mysterious character and mistakenly often played by white English or American actors when he is supposed to be Indian. He has also been seen as an older person, a severe, enigmatic scientist and navigator. This series is created by James Dormer and is based on the book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea though in the early history of its development was planned as a film. It corrects some of those choices restoring his Indian heritage and imagining him as a younger more heroic type so it most resembles the Sinbad series from 2012 with which is shares a breezy adventure with some darker elements. I’d always imagined Nemo himself built the Nautilus but episode one shows that as a prisoner of the British East India company Nemo’s engineering skills were used to help make the engines of a craft they were already planning that has a futuristic look for 1857. The Nautilus set is very impressive brought to life with a metallic aesthetic that avoids an obvious steampunk update and contains many accoutrements and the low lighting of the time enhanced by some unusual curvature. Its exterior shape resembles that of a metallic shark and it was designed to look like the one described Verne's books. 

The opening episode largely skims over the how’s and whys of such engineering and quite rightly focusses on the grandeur of such a vessel. Interestingly the show- or at least the version we saw in the UK-  does not have a title sequence save for a very large metallic N rising in slow motion out of the sea that lasts less then ten seconds. It looks like other territories may also get the title. 

Much of episode one, titled Anahata concerns the daring attempt by the prisoners to steal the Nautilus and this plays out in an effective quayside skirmish. A mixture of crew members alongside the oddly named Humility Lucas played by Georgia Flood and her guardian (or is it captor) Loti, the character who easily makes the most initial impression.  The crew are thus thrown together and have to work to escape. As Nemo, the versatile Shazad Latif does what he can with fairly  threadbare dialogue. Yet the overall thrust of the episode bodes well for a series, its busy, impressive looking and has potential. Nemo is driven both by personal revenge but also a sense of injustice and the series does not shy away from terrible things that have happened to these characters. Whether it is this realism chafing against the more fantastical elements that put off Disney, who knows? It does however give the series serious ballast.

The ongoing narrative runs across episodes as one continuous story so the cliffhanger at the end of part one of the Nautilus sinking leads in to a lively second episode Tick Tick Boom in which the vessel saves a whale and later encounters a giant squid. Both storylines are connected in a way that contrasts with the hard edge elsewhere. It’s not been clear till this point how far this series would step into fantasy and the answer as the enormous squid wraps its tentacles around the submarine is quite a way.

The mega squid seemingly awakened by the Company using prototype depth charges – is straight out of Verne’s novels and provides an early spectacle. Nemo even dons one of those early diving suits that we associate with the character to tussle with it only to be saved by the whale, a neat inversion. The episode does linger perhaps too long on engines and mechanics and surely if both Nemo and Benoit helped build the vessel it would be they rather than Humility who would come up with the fix?  She is quickly becoming a great character given a lot of life by Georgia Flood’s ebullient portrayal. Humility’s motives remain muddy; one minute she’s helping, The next hindering.

Early reviews of the series were critical of the characters other than the main ones but each of the crew are given a distinctive note and it will take time to give everyone space amidst the frenetic speed of the chase. An early standout is French actress Celine Manville as Loti who has a subtle humour and an unexpected propensity for action as demonstrated in part three when she hijacks a cart full of food. Hard on their tail is the Company’s prototype ship the Dreadnought which is silvery and has both sails and modern looking guns.

Fleeing the Dreadnought in part three What Lies Beneath, the crew land at a seemingly tranquil island apparently run benignly by a White Rajah played as only he can by Richard E Grant. It’s not a big surprise to discover a much darker truth behind the colourful facade and the episode unpeels it well, at least up to a chaotic fight sequence at a banquet which seems unsure whether to go for laughs or not. Yet the episode is packed with heroics, secrets revealed and an extravagant performance from Grant.

It's also home to quite a bit of backstory regarding both Nemo (who is of royal descent and whose family were killed by the company) and Humility (who is betrothed against her wishes to a nobleman Lord Pitt, who happens to be on the Dreadnought). It’s a little odd that Nemo does not immediately challenge the Rajah’s set up given that it reeks of Imperial oppression however warm the welcome seems. If the narrative relies a bit too often on people changing sides, it is a lively caper.

A clue as to the tone of the fourth episode lies in its title Slippery When Wet, an apt name for a narrative which just doesn’t quite allow itself to be caught. Fleeing the Dreadnought after an escapade in which Nemo seems to defy the laws of biology the crew are checking out a remote island for supplies. In the tradition of many a big screen fantasy movie there are monsters lurking. Despite being told not to wander off, the youngest of the crew wanders off and gets captured by the survivors of a shipwreck whose minds have become addled by their isolation. They exist in their own world with rituals and occasional sacrifices to a `God`. Noah Taylor shows up as Captain Mogg giving a suitably unhinged performance. The island is home to a variety of overgrown species, one in particular, a giant electric eel proves to be just as troublesome after they have seemingly escaped its clutches and are back on the Nautilus as it is on the island.

Despite everyone’s best efforts these plot strands don’t mesh too well together. Once the eel awakes and goes on the rampage, Mogg and co are forgotten or eaten alive. There’s a promising new character called Casimer played with seriousness by Muki Zubis who would make a good addition to the crew. Only she gets killed because she is afraid to get into the submarine despite the fact that she has spent so long living inside a tree trunk. It’s a few lapses of common sense like this and the fact that we can tell what is going to happen at each turn that undermine what is otherwise a thrilling enough episode. That eel is going to be trouble though…

Episode five, Hallucinations, probably contradicts the laws of physics several times as the Nautilus plunges downwards with a robustness denied most submarines whilst being crushed by the giant eel. Yet its worthwhile sacrificing fact if the results are as tense as this. Set almost entirely inside the stricken vessel the tension is ramped up with each development. Half way through it seems like the eel has given up but this is only because its too hot due to an undersea volcano bubbling below and, still without working engines, the Nautilus continues to drop towards this fiery new danger. For good measure there is also some sort of weird plague aboard, straight out of Star Trek, which makes people lapse into open eyed sleep as glowing veins appear on their faces. Such a desperate situation of course brings out some arguments but to be honest this is not really the series strongpoint.

What it does do very well is escalating danger and Humility’s dilemma as her plan to restart the vessel fails. By the end she is the only one left, having to don one of those super Victorian diving suits and go outside to remove a fin the eel left in the side of the Nautilus thus preventing it from being able to ascend. Just suspend disbelief here and lap up her nail-biting escapade which ends with a suitable dramatic cliffhanger. Georgia Flood is excellent ; her response to what happens, her shifting moods, her determination and in the end her realisation of the peril she is in are mostly done without dialogue yet you still know what she is thinking.

Episode six, The Big Blue, is so well assembled it makes something of a mockery of Disney’s decision to drop the series before even showing it. I’m not sure what it was they saw (or didn’t see) but this is a great example of a fantasy action adventure. The series is now keening closer to its Jules Verne origins and focussing on the wonder of scientific discovery. This episode the crew – or certainly Benoit – believe they may have discovered the mythical lost city of Atlantis even if it is in a different ocean than the legend suggests. So they don those fantastic diving suits to walk along the ocean floor and find a locale that appears to have been built rather than grown.

There are symmetrically correct honeycomb rocks, steps, and a sense that this may have once been a city. They surface in an area that has oxygen. This looks fantastic, it’s not clear if this was a location cave that’s had digital effects added or else a wholly studio based construction but whatever it is it looks amazing. As a rule a lot of shows and even films suffer when trying to convincingly present undersea scenarios but Nautilus does it superbly every time. Benoit and Humility are both in their element here but as these things go there is trouble ahead.

The show has managed to stick to more conventional giant monsters so far but this week’s fossils that are actually still alive are more imaginative. They aren’t that big but there are swarms of them. By going off to search more than he should, Benoit falls foul of these creatures and exits here in a neat conclusion to his tale of scientific zeal.

He's not the only regular character to die this week- having been imprisoned for a while on the Dreadnought, Jagadish ends up being forced to tell Millias the intended destination of the Nautilus only to be shot afterwards. This emphasises nobody is safe. Millais is an interesting character who has simmered in the background with some personal background with Nemo which will become even clearer in the second half of the season. Luke Arnold gives him a shifty quality and we’re never sure of his motives. He was, as earlier flashbacks showed, a friend to Nemo at school, but now he seems an unwilling henchman for the Company though the series is not short of characters who are hiding something.

Cold War, suffers from uneven tone and a few too many significant character revelations almost as if a lot of material was shoved into this episode. Not only do we have a tense reunion between former friends Nemo and Millais, but Humility meets her fiancée Lord Pitt for the first time and it turns out he bribed her father for her hand in marriage. Plus, we have Blaster learning that his apparently long lost father isn’t real at all but a brand name from a biscuit tin. That all this takes place in the middle of the Arctic where both Nautilus and Dreadnought have become icebound and each has capacity to help the other makes it a very crowded narrative indeed. Add to that an impromptu game of cricket on the ice which seems a physically unlikely possibility given the temperature and the surface and you have a real mix up. Perhaps it is an unseasonably balmy day as none of the character’s breaths are visible.

Individually these reveals do add value and there is something quintessentially English about playing cricket and serving tea in even the remotest location and in such a dire situation. The conditions stop any of these key conversations being as powerful as they should be though to be enjoyed are Humility and Loti managing to overcome a number of Company militia and escape the ship, Celine Melville as dry in her reactions as ever.

Both fictionally and dramatically the wittily named The Tipping Point ,should really have been inserted earlier in the run. It marks the first time we’ve seen any true bonding amongst the crew even if it stems from a mutiny as they rebel against Nemo’s decision to travel under the North Pole. It a journey whose duration will exceed the amount of air they probably have. Yet when the vessel appears to hit the bottom of the sea and spring a curious leak it transpires that the restlessness that has turned the crew against Nemo is not the only tipping point. The Nautilus sits dangling over a precipice, engines conked out and a hoard of metal eating bugs aboard.

This sort of wide-eyed jeopardy- somewhat ignoring science yet tremendously exciting- is what the series does well as has already been proved. What is less normal is for a reckoning near the end in which each characters re-introduced themselves with some backstory. It’s hard to imagine none of these conversations have taken place during however many weeks they’ve been travelling together but it would also have helped viewers get to know these people better. This scene, though unfeasibly taking place at a moment of imminent danger, is actually quite moving and shows a versatility amongst the cast that not all of them have had the chance to demonstrate till now, notably Ashan Kumar who gets a great speech which he delivers with passion.

The all-female tribe guarding a treasure is as old a tv adventure series story as any and episode nine, Ride of the Valkyrie introduces a Viking version guarding the treasure that has been Nemo’s target from the start. It’s quite a slight episode actually; after the initial wander on the ocean floor to find the remains of a long boat the crew are hauled up and taken to this tribe where they will be tried for looting. They really should have paid more attention to all those skulls on spikes in the water. The trial seems rather basic wherein Nemo’s crew have to say how wonderful he is and played for laughs when their lives are supposedly at stake. Then after they manage an escape, centuries of tradition are abandoned by the tribe after a couple of them have clocked the submarine. “The world has changed” says one. It’s not very convincing really though does reinforce the new found camaraderie amongst the Nautilus crew. Essentially though it’s a breather before the final episode. At the end of this one we see Crawley mustering troops in anticipation of Nemo coming to London. Only he is already there watching them…

To Big To Fail, the final episode is atypical in that we don’t even see the Nautilus till near the end. Much of the time is spent seeing how Nemo and the crew manage to get their hands on a majority of shares in the Company culminating in a raucous board meeting. This all seems to go well, the excitement comes afterwards and  includes the reveal of Milliel’s involvement in the death of Nemo’s family as well as a hair raising escape by the submarine just under an exploding bridge. If the early part of the series could be a little too careful explaining just how everything fitted together there’s a welcome devil may care approach to this one which just asks us to go with the compressed timeframe. The episode brings the best out of the cast; Shazad Latif is in powerful form as he rights wrongs.  Damien Garvey had been an outstandingly hissable villain throughout.

The only disappointment is that the plot strands opened up here for a potential second season will not happen. So, we won’t find out where Humility and Loti go after getting left behind, whether, as Nemo believes, Benoit is still alive or exactly what the shady Cuff's agenda actually is. The prospect of a rival Nautilus being built suggested in this episode is a salivating one.

Given the richness of the material and how watchable the show is, its fate is difficult to fathom. Maybe it felt too old fashioned though surely swashbuckling adventure with giant creatures will never go out of style? Possibly it was a difficult one to market; too bleak and serious perhaps? There is nothing wrong with the presentation; it looks fantastic on the design, effects and action fronts and the Nautilus is such a cool vessel. I suspect in the end, from what others have said, it was just that the mix of characters didn’t engage. It is true the regular cast is probably too big and some of them were partly forgotten or in the case of Cuff seemed to vanish for chunks of time. 

Yet this is a traditional story and more faithful to its origins at the pen of Jules Verne than most other interpretations. I seem to make a habit of liking shows that are cancelled after one season but while I appreciate that series like Lockwood and Co are likely to have a smaller audience I can’t see why Nautilus didn’t surface to more acclaim and love. It is simply a big adventure with its heart in the right place and home to as many edge of the seat thrills as you’ll find anywhere.