Krapopolis premieres with two episodes September 24 on Fox. This is a spoiler-free review of the first three episodes.
On paper, finding out that Dan Harmon (Community, Rick and Morty) has created a new, adult, animated comedy, Krapopolis, featuring a trifecta of some of my favorite Brit comedians – Richard Ayoade, Matt Berry and Hannah Waddingham – earns instant elevated excitement levels. But Krapopolis doesn’t deliver on its potential. From the ancient Greek setting to surprisingly violent storylines, nothing about Krapopolis comes across as particularly sharp or timely. Even as someone who loved Greek mythology, the show’s premise comes across as corny and too niche for a broad audience, catering to Greek myth nerds and scholars. Aside from the stellar Waddingham, who utterly steals the show as the narcissistic goddess Deliria, Krapopolis has an inauspicious start as one of the least impactful Harmon efforts in some time.
“All Hail the Goddess of Likeability'' opens the series by throwing the audience into the Greek deep end. If you haven’t cracked open a mythology book in a while, there’s a bit of a learning curve in figuring out the characters and their power dynamics within the fictional city of Krapopolis. Lacking an opening title sequence that explains the premise of the show, the first few minutes of Krapopolis require audiences to figure out what’s what.
The basics are that Tyrannis (Ayoade) is the extremely nerdy king of burgeoning, but still backwater, Krapopolis. As the mortal son of the goddess Deliria (Waddingham) and the monster mantitaur – that’s half manticore, half centaur, so human plus lion plus scorpion plus horse – Shlub (Berry), Tyrannis is desperate to move away from the mercurial ways of his parents and lead his people with an eye towards a grand legacy. His goal is to create a civilization based on innovation and science, but everyone he’s related to makes that close to impossible.
For Tyrannis’ family, Harmon constructs a dependably dysfunctional cast of characters who often rely on their performers’ established schticks. Ayoade gives us a nasally, whiny king who has intellect but none of his parent’s charisma. As Shlub, Berry is pretty one-note, playing his patented “oversexed guy” who’s mostly clueless about anything that doesn’t have to do with his genitals. Serving as the muscle, Stupendous (Pam Murphy) is Tyrannis’ freakishly strong sister who is happy to bash heads first, and quibble later. Half Shlub/half mermaid, Hippocampus (Duncan Trussell) is the short-fused, fledgling scientist stuck with a fish-in-a-bowl head and a bipedal body.
Without a doubt, the best of the bunch is Waddingham’s super camp and super funny Deliria. The Ted Lasso star manages to take even the most perfunctory lines and bend them to her comedic will. Blasting into every scene like an attention-seeking tsunami, Deliria is entirely selfish and cares not for mortals unless they’re building her big temples, yet you can’t wait for her to show up and inject some much needed energy. The only problem is that no other character on Krapopolis matches that energy. The show deflates when Deliria’s not around. Waddingham also has an innate ability to take the clichés of her character and turn them into something fresh – which is, unfortunately, not the case with the writing or the other performances. That’s not to say the other actors aren’t funny, they’re just not Deliria funny, and that throws the show out of comedic whack.
Storywise, this isn't Harmon at his most ambitious. In the three episodes screened for critics, it’s clear the ancient Greek backdrop was chosen as a playground to give the creator and his writers the opportunity to do a contemporary riff on topics like the Trojan horse or the Olympics. In “The Stuperbowl,” Stupendous accidentally turns rock throwing into a violent, football-like game that inspires the crowd’s bloodlust. And in the span of that play, every modern sports ritual we know today – from sports commentators to the wave – is “invented” with an anachronistic twist. It’s humorous at times, but there’s an overreliance on scattalogical gags that feel tired and unsurprising. There’s also a very sitcom-y structure to Tyrannis’ schemes that becomes formulaic, fast.
Krapopolis is also gruesomely violent. Having humans, gods, and monsters coexist results in copious maulings, graphic murders and throwaway deaths that feel like they're aiming for what Monty Python accomplished 50-plus years ago, yet don’t hit the same comedic heights. Depending on the skills of the guest stars, some of these bits land better than others. Keith David’s King Asskill is a blast as a deadly leader who befriends Tyrannis, and Amber Stevens West’s Athena, who has an over-the-top, ongoing beef with Deliria, is a highlight.
It’s certainly true that almost all new shows need a runway of a few episodes to find their voice and rhythm, and that’s the case with Krapopolis. However, what’s presented isn’t really innovating in the animation space, visually or comically. When you’ve got competition like Star Trek: Lower Decks or even the Futurama revival, which are both successfully skewering present-day absurdities within fantastical period settings, you’ve got to up your game. It remains to be seen if Krapopolis manages to get there.
