Superficially, Dangerous Liaisons would seem to be serving up everything a Dangerous Liaisons series ought to. The Starz drama is positively overflowing with beautiful people vowing love and revenge with equal fervor, toying with each other’s sentiments and reputations in pursuit of power or just plain fun — all from within the gorgeously ornate trappings of 18th-century French nobility, the impending revolution barely a whisper on the wind.

And for a spell, it feels like it could be enough. But as the season progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that the accusations the characters throw at one another of lacking heart may as well be levied toward the series itself. With paper-thin characters and a narrative that prioritizes momentum over emotional depth, its confectionary delights dissolve as quickly as sugar on the tongue.

Technically, this Dangerous Liaisons, created by Harriet Warner, is not the Dangerous Liaisons of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 18th-century novel but a prequel. The Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil once again hold court in the lead roles, but at this point on their journeys they’ve yet to claim those lofty titles. They are simply Pascal (Nicholas Denton) and Camille (Alice Englert), two young nobodies dreaming of a better life together. The eight hour-long episodes trace what one society wife snidely but accurately describes as “the most meteoric rise since Christ on the third day,” as the pair scheme to get where we already know they’ll be by the start of Dangerous Liaisons proper.

For Camille, the best hope of advancement comes in the form of the current Marquise de Merteuil (Lesley Manville), who sees in the younger woman echoes of her own feminist-flavored indignation, as well as an opportunity to get back at a specific somebody who has wronged her. For Pascal, it lies in his efforts to reclaim the title that was lost to him when his widowed father married the ambitious Ondine (Colette Dalal Tchantcho), and passed over his own son to grant the vicomte title to hers (Ahmed Elhaj).

Though this is all new territory for the characters, several elements familiar from the classic version are echoed here, including the pious noblewoman (Carice van Houten) who needs to be seduced for nefarious reasons and a fresh-from-the-convent innocent (Agnes O’Casey) betrothed to an older nobleman. (The latter even shares with her original counterpart a crush on the same tutor, Dimitri Gripari’s Danceny.) Add in a pair of tragic, slowly revealed backstories for our leads and a criminal subplot set in Paris’ sex work industry, and Dangerous Liaisons never finds itself short on splashy reveals or hairpin turns.

What it does lack is any convincing reason to care much about any of them. Dangerous Liaisons‘ arcs hinge on passions so overwhelming — whether they be rooted in lust, adoration or rage — that they might drive characters with everything to lose to throw caution to the wind, or those with nothing to destroy themselves on the altar of their desires. In tandem, its appeal as entertainment depends on its ability to bring viewers along for the ride on that tidal wave of intensity, so that we experience every surge of longing or sting of betrayal as our own. In order for the show to do that, though, we’d have to feel for these characters, and in order for us to do that, we’d have to know them.

Dangerous Liaisons tells us plenty about Camille’s quest for vengeance and gift for manipulation, or about Pascal’s devotion to Camille or his talent for seduction. But it shows no interest in plumbing their personalities or psyches beyond the basic motivations required by the narrative, and no curiosity about their quirks or inconsistencies or senses of humor. For that matter, while each episode sends Camille and Pascal’s affair teetering between love and war (“There is nothing in between,” one of them declares), we never get much sense of why they’re so drawn to each other in the first place.

The supporting characters fare no better. Nowhere is the flimsiness of Dangerous Liaisons‘ characterizations more obvious than in Victoire (Kosar Ali), who is nominally Camille’s best friend but is largely treated by both Camille and the series like a particularly cherished servant. If Victoire has wants or ambitions of her own that don’t revolve around Camille, the series hardly deigns to mention them; if her relationship with Camille is rooted in anything but longstanding habit, it’s never clear what. (That Victoire is Black only makes the dynamic feel iffier, since Dangerous Liaisons seems unsure whether it wants to acknowledge the racism woven into Marie Antoinette-era France or embrace a colorblind Bridgerton-style approach to casting.)

Still, Dangerous Liaisons surely could have papered over many of its flaws if it only managed to generate enough heat, given that one of the biggest draws of every other version of Dangerous Liaisons is how sexy it is. Alas: For all the time Englert and Denton spend snuggled up together in various states of undress, they struggle to conjure any real sparks. The breathless chemistry of a Bridgerton (or really, even of a non-romance like The Bear) is missing. Nor do either of them find it with others. A detour to a sex club that should be deliciously depraved, what with all the writhing, mostly naked bodies strewn about, falls flat when Englert’s Camille projects more impatience than sexual appetite.

It’s one thing for Pascal and Camille to treat those around them like pawns in a game, meaningless objects to be used and discarded with only the sporadic twinge of guilt. Dangerous Liaisons‘ mistake is that it does the same with all of its characters, including Pascal and Camille. The series throws plot twist after plot twist in pursuit of pleasure, and occasionally it finds some in its handsome costumes and lavish sets. More often, however, it just tramples over any opportunity for true, lasting feeling.