Our main character is "Philo," played by Orlando Bloom. He's a police officer in "the Burgue," a city with technology and appearance roughly equivalent to London around 1900. But imagine it more steampunk, with blimps and trolleys on raised lines, smoke and pollution. The city, and the country, is being inundated with sentient magical creatures - and while most of these creatures (notably the faeries and the fauns) are essentially human (and can interbreed with humans, as is made abundantly clear - also an opportunity to goose the ratings with lots of bare breasts), they face racism blatantly similar to what Africans and Chinese would have faced in the UK or North America in 1900. As the magical creature's country is being over-run by "the Pact," they have little choice about immigrating to the Burgue - where they mostly work in indentured servitude.

Philo is immediately shown to be sympathetic and polite to the "Critch" (the deragotory collective term for all the magical creatures). There have been a number of brutal murders, and Philo is trying to solve them. Over time, we delve into his back-story and find he was a soldier overseas in the failed human war againt the Pact - and that he had a long relationship with Vignette Stonemoss (Cara Delevingne), a faerie. Which becomes problematic when she lands in the Burgue.

Several critics have accused this series of having too much going on. They're not wrong. We're pulled through the war and all its politics, one of our other main characters is the Chancellor of the Burgue along with his conniving wife and son - so we're also expected to absorb the city politics, there's the Philo-Vignette love story, there's the murders and the possibly magical creature causing them, there's the house of prostitution Philo keeps visiting (for work rather than pleasure), there's Philo's old army friend in jail, there's the formerly rich family and a story line straight out of Jane Austen except the new family "friend" is a "Puck" (derogatory term for a faun), there's the racism, and I'm sure I'm missing some other threads. It's too busy ... but I quite liked it anyway.