You Would Do It Too

A robbery takes place on an airport coach and goes wrong. Or did it? That's the dilemma soon-to be-ex husband and wife detectives Fran Garza and Rebecca Quirós have to solve. Fortunately, this is a puzzle that the viewer has to decipher without the extra baggage of irrelevant background stories of the protagonists. We just get some back story as facts and aren't swamped in it. The meat is in the solving of the crime.

Slowly, in twenty-five minute episodes, the two cops get to the bottom of things. On the way there, three different explanations for the botched crime emerge.

This is in no way a profound series, but it does discuss on a superficial level the ethics of vigilantism. And it shines a spotlight on Spain's "popular jury" system in a critical way.

I watched this over two evenings and would love to see a similarly fast-paced Season Two emerge. Perhaps next year.

Each episode in the series "You Would Do It, Too" acts like another layer in a story; adding more perspective to what actually occurred. That keeps this series interesting and, in some ways, more real and engaging. The actors all strong in their roles. What I especially liked about the series was the rendering of the dialogue in English. Dubbing is often wooden. These voice actors were very into their roles; they didn't sound like they were just reading a script, something that disappointed me about the recent Apple TV series "Where's Wanda." I've seen all episodes but the last one; can't wait to see how it turns out.

Very poor script writing filled with implausible plot moves, absurd police actions, horrible pushy soundtrack and overly dramatic high school acting by some of the actors. It feels incredibly soapy, maybe written by a 14 year old. Even though I had use the English voice over that's not the issue. I've watched plenty of Spanish, German and Argentinian shows that are fine using English Voice-over. I'm writing this as a public service, no one should be made crud like this. How does it even get made? Don't they realise they are wasting our precious time on earth with this codswallop, they should pay a price fro the time lost. I haven't even started on the juvenile feminism throughout. With the police you're quite within your rights to say "no comment". Bizarre to charge people who have just been victims of violent robbery. And very unlikely. The only witnesses. More likely to end up in civil suit against the police by the victims. Dumb soap masquerading as a thriller.

Over and over again, Spanish producers are making thriller shows like this one, and over and over again are failing in exactly the same. The only explanation I have is that showrunners have an unrealistic perception of their own talent and capabilities.

In this case, the premise is good. It is a noir or police/crime thriller, with a commercial vocation. They do not try to discover the wheel, just to create an interesting story, and unexpected twists where no one is what they seem to be.

The problems: The script is really bad. The dialogues are sometimes ridiculous and the behavior of characters are always moving between unrealistic to stupid. The lack on internal logic, the inconsistencies, and the lack of a minimal realism in the characters' behavior make difficult to suspend disbelief. Moreover, are trying to add so many twists and subplots that add nothing interesting, to the point that the thing turns to boring and ridiculous after the first two episodes, the best of the show.

As usual in Spanish shows, the depiction of police work and interactions is sometimes poor or even ridiculous and offensive. Clearly, a story or characters cannot be more intelligent than the writers. And the writers seems to be very limited and lazy. They even didn't document or checked the most essential police procedures. The main female character doing the part of a police inspector is just not well suited for that role, being ridiculous sometimes. So, we can add the bad casting decisions to the fails that plagued this show.

The actor's work is lamentable. Actors are really bad. They cannot even talk clearly, to the point that you want to switch on the subtitles, because is very difficult to understand in their poor diction. Two main characters, both well known actresses in Spain, are constantly overacting. I think that spanish productions should care that. When you rewatch old movies and shows, the actors talk perfectly well and intelligibly. What happened?

It is always the same. They have good ideas, the production and resources are good. But they ruin it failing always in the same points: not so good acting, poor scripts, unbelievable and illogical behavior of characters.

This series explores perspectives in a very smart way.

The series starts by what looks like a simple heist case. However, the series is way deeper than that, and it shows that detectives should be visionories, as this series explores various perspectives for that simple case.

The characters are very impressive, and this is important in a mystery series because this is the main driver of a mystery show. Secondly, the climax was at point, reached in a sufficient number of episodes and was very clear and made sense.

The series is very realistic and recommend for those who like crime-mystery shows.