CARNIVÀLE, THE ETERNAL FIGHT AGAINST DARK FORCES

Before the beginning, after the Great War between Heaven and Hell, God created the Earth and gave dominion over it to the crafty ape he called Man; and to each generation was born a creature of light and a creature of darkness; and great armies clashed by night in the ancient war between Good and Evil. 

There was magic then, nobility, and unimaginable cruelty; and so it was until the day that a false sun exploded over Trinity, and Man forever traded away wonder for reason.

Today, The Grandma wants to spend the day at hotel watching TV. She has chosen one of her favourite American TV Series, Carnivàle, set in the United States Dust Bowl during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The series, created by Daniel Knauf, ran for two seasons between 2003 and 2005. 

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Carnivàle was produced by HBO and aired between September 14, 2003, and March 27, 2005. Its creator, Daniel Knauf, also served as executive producer along with Ronald D. Moore and Howard Klein. Jeff Beal composed the original incidental music. Nick Stahl and Clancy Brown starred as Ben Hawkins and Brother Justin Crowe, respectively. The show was filmed in Santa Clarita, California and nearby Southern California locations.

In tracing the lives of disparate groups of people in a traveling carnival, Knauf's story combined a bleak atmosphere with elements of the surreal in portraying struggles between good and evil and between free will and destiny. The show's mythology drew upon themes and motifs from traditional Christianity and gnosticism together with Masonic lore, particularly that of the Knights Templar order.

Early reviews praised Carnivàle for style and originality but questioned the approach and execution of the story. The first episode set an audience record for an HBO original series and drew durable ratings through the first season. When the series proved unable to sustain these ratings in its second season, the series was cancelled. An intended six-season run was thus cut short by four seasons.

 

In all, 24 episodes of Carnivàle were broadcast. In 2004 the series won five Emmys out of fifteen nominations. The show received numerous other nominations and awards between 2004 and 2006.

The two seasons of Carnivàle take place in the Depression-era Dust Bowl between 1934 and 1935, and consist of two main plotlines that slowly converge. The first involves a young man with strange healing powers named Ben Hawkins (Nick Stahl), who joins a traveling carnival when it passes near his home in Milfay, Oklahoma. Soon thereafter, Ben begins having surrealistic dreams and visions, which set him on the trail of a man named Henry Scudder, a drifter who crossed paths with the carnival many years before, and who apparently possessed unusual abilities similar to Ben's own.

The second plotline revolves around a Father Coughlin-esque Methodist preacher, Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown), who lives with his sister Iris (Amy Madigan) in California. He shares Ben's prophetic dreams and slowly discovers the extent of his own unearthly powers, which include bending human beings to his will and making their sins and greatest evils manifest as terrifying visions. Certain that he is doing God's work, Brother Justin fully devotes himself to his religious duties, not realizing that his ultimate nemesis Ben Hawkins and the carnival are inexorably drawing closer.

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The Carnivàle story was originally intended to be a trilogy of books, consisting of two seasons each. This plan did not come to fruition, as HBO canceled the show after the first two seasons. Each season consists of twelve episodes.

Airing on HBO benefited Carnivàle in several ways. Because HBO does not rely on commercial breaks, Carnivàle had the artistic freedom to vary in episode length. Although the episodes averaged a runtime of 54 minutes, the episodes Insomnia and Old Cherry Blossom Road were 46 minutes and 59 minutes, respectively. HBO budgeted approximately US$4 million for each episode, considerably more than most television series receive.

Carnivàle's 1930s' Dust Bowl setting required significant research and historical consultants to be convincing, which was made possible with HBO's strong financial backing. 

As a result, reviews praised the look and production design of the show as impeccable, spectacular and as an absolute visual stunner. In 2004, Carnivàle won four Emmys for art direction, cinematography, costumes, and hairstyling.

To give a sense of the dry and dusty environment of the Dust Bowl, smoke and dirt were constantly blown through tubes onto the set. The actors' clothes were ragged and drenched in dirt, and Carnivàle had approximately 5,000 people costumed in the show's first season alone. The creative team listened to 1930s' music and radio and read old Hollywood magazines to get the period's sound, language, and slang right.

The art department had an extensive research library of old catalogs, among them an original 1934 Sears Catalog, which were purchased at flea markets and antique stores.

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The East European background of some characters and Asian themes in Brother Justin's story were incorporated into the show. Aside from the show's supernatural elements, a historical consultant deemed Carnivàle's historic accuracy to be excellent regarding the characters' lives and clothes, their food and accommodations, their cars and all the material culture.

Carnivàle's opening title sequence was created by A52, a visual effects and design company based in Los Angeles, and featured music composed by Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman. The opening title sequence won an Emmy for Outstanding Main Title Design in 2004. The production team of A52 had intended to create a title sequence that grounded viewers in the mid-1930s, but that also allowed people to feel a larger presence of good and evil over all of time.

Carnivàle features instrumental music composed by Jeff Beal, as well as many popular or obscure songs from the 1920s and 1930s, the time when Carnivàle's story takes place. 

Although almost every Carnivàle episode has a distinctive story with a new carnival setting, all episodes are part of an overarching good-versus-evil story that only culminates and resolves very late in Season 2.

The pilot episode begins with a prologue talking of a creature of light and a creature of darkness, also known as Avatars, being born to each generation preparing for a final battle. Carnivàle does not reveal its characters as Avatars beyond insinuation, and makes the nature of suggested Avatars a central question. Reviewers believed Ben to be a Creature of Light and Brother Justin a Creature of Darkness.

Other than through the characters, the show's good-and-evil theme manifests in the series' contemporary religion, the Christian military order Knights Templar, tarot divination, and in historical events like the Dust Bowl and humankind's first nuclear test.

The writers had established a groundwork for story arcs, character biographies and genealogical character links before filming of the seasons began, but many of the intended clues remained unnoticed by viewers. While Ronald D. Moore was confident that Carnivàle was one of the most complicated shows on television, Daniel Knauf reassured critics that Carnivàle was intended to be a demanding show with a lot of subtext and admitted that you may not understand everything that goes on but it does make a certain sense.

Knauf provided hints about the show's mythological structure to online fandom both during and after the two-season run of Carnivàle, and left fans a production summary of Carnivàle's first season two years after cancellation.

Download Carnivàle Seasons 1 & 2

On the heels of the skirmish men foolishly called the War to End All Wars, the Dark One sought to elude his destiny, live as a mortal. So he fled across the ocean, to an empire called America. But by his mere presence, a cancer corrupted the spirit of the land.

People were rendered mute by fools who spoke many words but said nothing. For whom oppression and cowardice were virtues, and freedom… an obscenity.

And into this dark heartland, the prophet stalked his enemy, till, diminished by his wounds, he turned to the next in the ancient line of Light.

And so it was that the fate of mankind came to rest on the trembling shoulders of the most reluctant of saviors.

Samson