For every
Game of Thrones, there’s a Marco Polo. What are the human costs of a show that disappears without trace?
John Fusco has been writing scripts for 34 years. In that time, he’s seen his work brought to life by stars including Jackie Chan and Woody Harrelson. As a producer, he has worked with blockbuster budgets totalling tens of millions of dollars, and his Kevin Costner-fronted Bonnie and Clyde drama, The Highwaymen, was one of Netflix’s top 10 most-watched original shows last year. But there is one part of Fusco’s career that he finds difficult to look back on. “I feel like I finally have a therapist,” he laughs at the end of a 30-minute call about his 2016 historical adventure series Marco Polo.
The fourth series
Netflix commissioned, Marco Polo was a fantasy epic that followed Polo’s 13th-century jaunts in the court of Kublai Khan. The show’s eye-watering budget was visible in every episode, with lavish sets and expensive special effects. But it wasn’t enough, and the show never took off, languishing behind Orange Is The New Black and House Of Cards, the platform’s big hits at the time.