H - Helena

From IMDB: "Inspired by real events, Hache is the story of Helena, a woman catapulted to the heroin trafficking business in the Barcelona of the 60s. Creator: Verónica Fernández. Stars: Adriana Ugarte, Eduardo Noriega, Marc Martínez."

Two seasons, 16 x 50 minute episodes. No doubt season 3 is upcoming.

Hache (Spanish for the letter "H" (Helena), starring the gorgeous Adriana Ugarte rises from humble beginnings to run a night club and Heroin manufacturing business. As so often happens, her closest 'associates' are her biggest enemies and she has to use all her wits to survive.

Amazing to see the Barcelona, fashion and cars from almost sixty years ago. In many ways Hache reminds me of 'Queen of the South', where another strong woman rises from the ashes and becomes a Narco boss in Mexico.

Lot's of smoking, drug use, and gang violence, so no kiddies to watch this. I give Hache and 8/10. Easy to binge watch.

Barcelona, 1960. Helena's husband is in jail and she needs money to get him a decent lawyer. She finds work with the gangster Malpica, a heroin importer and distributor. A drug turf war is underway and Malpica is quite ruthless, leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake. The string of murders has the police interested and they have a team trying to identify the culprit. The police investigations and drug war also put Helena in the firing line. In her new world, Helena is known simply by her initial - Hache.

This TV series had the potential to be quite interesting, and at first glance seemed to be a combination of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad. However, it is soon apparent that this is nowhere near either of those two superb shows.

The plot is not that intriguing and largely seems to go sideways rather than forward. Very drawn out and padded, making for dull viewing.

Character engagement is limited. We should be empathetic towards Helena / Hache but while she's not a dislikeable character she is actually quite bland. There's no other characters worth supporting, except maybe the cop Vinuesa but he's also rather dull.

To top it off, production values are not that great. Colours seem drab, making the dull script even more lifeless. For a 2019 series there's none of the crispness and depth you'd expect from HD. It seemed so bad I thought I was watching it in 480 p resolution! Turned out it was 1,080...

Disappointing.

Love this series. We'll made with high fidelity cinematography that represents the epoch pretty well. The music is also very good.

But mostly boring in long stretches. Could have taken 4 one hour episodes to tell the story completely. Lots of filler.

A tasty cocktail poured over ice cool cubes of 1960s Barcelona night life. An intoxicating blend of gangster grit, sweet suspense, and a rich aftertaste of raw humanity. I'm not sure about the shaken, but it will leave you stirred. "Another season senor?" Don't mind if I do.