10 Overhyped TV Shows You Massively Regret Watching
4. Marco Polo
13th/14th Century Venetian explorer Marco Polo is an extremely famous historical figure, not least because there’s a swimming pool-based game named after him.
His travels through Asia are the stuff of legend and would make for a great TV show, or at least that’s what Netflix thought when they aired a drama series in his name in 2014. Italian star Lorenzo Richelmy landed the title role, whilst Benedict Wong, who would become globally famous as Wong in the MCU, was cast as Kublai Khan.
Real-life historical hero? Big name streamer behind it? Good cast of actors? What could possibly go wrong?
Without the historical name attached to it, Marco Polo would have been just another boring adventure show with played-out stories, cliché characters, and zero sense of innovation or excitement. The first season plodded along at a criminally dull pace, and whilst there were improvements by season two, it was too late.
Marco Polo met its end after 20 episodes, one special, and a reported loss of $200 million for the big red N. They should have just stuck to the pool game.