I landed back in Spain again, not a difficult task because Netflix Espana is apparently going gangbusters. This time, it was in the beautiful rural setting of Extremadura, a village named Yesques where creepy things are underfoot because people keep disappearing. Then there's that huge forest with a wolf population. There's the strange village annual parade where villagers enact 'lost souls' in animal costumes...
But that's not where we start. No, it's young Madrid doctor Clara we focus on first. When she suffers a collapse and gets a new heart, she becomes obsessed with the idea of leaping over legal boundaries and finding everything she can about her donor. And that is what leads us to the village, to the mother of dead boy Carlos.
Now Carlos's death too is deemed mysterious. His ex, Maria, claims he drove his car on purpose over that bridge. But there's MORE tragedy: Carlos's father Miguel, a policeman, has disappeared too. Miguel's partner Rafa has an unsavory uncle who may or may not be implicated in a fire that's burned down his old house and his ex-wife with it...but wait, that was years ago, because, alas, there is a split timeline to contend with.
You see, this was the directorial decision I have issues with. Shaky focus on who our lead actually is. Carla arrives in the village due to a donated heart, and the bond she forms with the donor's mother is thoughtfully paced. And this was a pretty darn strong reason or narrative thread for us to follow. But then we have to keep jumping back to 2004 in order to understand why Miguel first became obsessed with a certain suspect, then disappeared himself. (ALSO there is a third storyline from 1979.) So then why even bother giving Carla a new heart? The lead might as well have been Maria, Carlos's ex. She was already in the village, and we wouldn't have had this misleading heart thing to meander through.
The other bothersome element was the nauseating violence. I simply wanted to scream at a scene late in the penultimate episode, where I couldn't believe we were being made to watch this. My sensitivity is surely going up the older I get. Granted it was not handled poorly, but yeesh! And other small niggles via unnecessary red herrings cropped up, but weren't disastrous for the viewing experience.
But they did manage to keep me watching until the end, so that is something. Just that with a tighter narrative focus we might have been better off. The fine performances and spectacular rural Spanish scenery do elevate the goings-on when they get bogged down, too, so that is a plus. But I am now very ready to watch something lighthearted, something whimsical, even. Enough of murders, women being hit, people disappearing, fires, abductions, aaargh! I have my eye on something already and shall report back on that shortly.
