Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mal

Superb. I haven't enjoyed a TV show this much since Breaking Bad. If you speak Spanish, you will enjoy Colombian from different provinces which is a delight. Escobar role is phenomenal. The sicarios are so believable and scary but hilarious at the same time! Angie Cepeda is a bonus. She is so hot is not even funny (or it may be I can't get the image of her naked in "Pantaleon y sus visitadoras".

If I have to criticize something: 50 episodes would have been more than enough.

Another great thing about this series is that you get to see a lot of Colombia. Especially Medellin and Bogota and the beautiful Colombians which are a pleasure to listen to. Spanish is my native tongue (I am Argentinean) and I believe Colombians have the most beautiful and richest Spanish. .

Amazing! I highly recommend it.

This was an interestingly informative series. Unlike the new Narcos show, this show gave us a complete insight of how Pablo became the terror he was.

In my opinion Narcos has to get better with their storyline, as it is not as thorough as the Pablo el Patron series. Maybe because they telling it from the Narcs perspective and even though it is a good show, I feel like it is still lacking some pertinent information.

Pablo el Patron took me by surprise and held me tight until the very end of the series and now I feel like I need more but the story came to an end in the right way. LOVED IT!!!!!!! I hate it took me 4 years to see it.

In my opinion, "El Patrón del mal" is much better than "Narcos". More realistic and accurate to real facts. If you are from a Spanish speaking country, or if you are familiar with this language, you will realize that, no doubt.

In "El Patrón..." all actors are Colombian; you feel like you are there with them, at the times and places the events are happening. The main actor, Andrés Parra, really looks like Pablo here, talks like him, moves like him... And this is also the case with most of the other main characters (even if the names are changed sometimes, for instance Carlos Lehder is here "Marcos Herber", and so on).

Some have critized that this series are like a "telenovela", but I don´t agree. Maybe the structure is similar, but the main thing in the plot are not the love stories and the romantic misunderstandings of the characters (like it is the case in telenovelas), but the recent Colombian history, seen from different perspectives: Pablo and the Medellín Cartel on one side, and the authorities fighting against crime on the other.

Some have critized that this series glorifies Escobar, but I do not agree with that either. One of the scriptwriters is actually Camilo Cano, a grandson of Guillermo Cano, the director of an important newspaper who was killed by Escobar. And the script is based on a book written by a former mayor of Medellín.

By the way, there´s a book out there about this series written by a fan, it is a guide for the episodes of the series. As far as I know it is only in Spanish for now, but if you speak this language, love this series and/or are interested in the story of Pablo and the Medellín Cartel it could be interesting for you. The book´s name is "Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mal (Guía de todos los episodios)" and you can find it in Amazon (ebook and paperback).

While the production seems a bit cheezie on some levels (the seventies teevee serials music for example) it is easy to learn to ignore that and get sucked in hard with the exceptional acting and real-life drama.

The complexity of the criminal characters in this drama illustrate how easy it is for people to trust and become loyal to such psychopaths in real life.

The portrayal of Pablo -- an average looking and in mid-life overweight man who does not fit into any of the stereotypical movie portrayals of the gangster/bad guy is honest and fantastic. Same with the actors who portray his wife and others -- one reviewer commented that his wife could have more attractive for the show. C'mon! She was average, just like all the rest. Its when actresses and actors are chosen for their looks that exceed that of any people in real life that a show or movie becomes unbelievable and bad.

The cold, calculated way in which Pablo uses others to do his dirty work most of the time, and how its not for sadistic pleasure but more for simply power and like a any narcissistic psychopath, people are just to be used and disposed of when in the way - save for his family and yet he controls everyone, even his family tightly and masterfully because that is the all encompassing focus of a typical narcissistic psychopath.

The show is well done and binge watching should be expected as it is nearly impossible to predict what will happen next as none of this follows a writer's script, but instead, the intense and irrational machinations of a madman and his lackeys.

No doubt Columbia is still recovering from the near complete hijacking of their country and the brutal assassinations of innocents, but the US would do well to take heed to the lessons of how the rich and powerful can and will usurp democracy when it serves their interests.

Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mal is an ambitious and largely successful undertaking to portray the man who held the country of Colombia in his tyrannical grip (by the proverbial cojones) for more than a decade. The epic series (73 episodes on Netflix) details the damage and heartbreak this man left in his wake. The story of Pablo Escobar is nothing if not unbelievable, and this expansive production manages to explain the seemingly inexplicable, how a single person could essentially take over a country, corrupting countless individuals through the imposition of a ruthless ¨plata o plomo¨ (money or bullets) ultimatum at every stratum of his society.

The series is not perfect--the jarringly repetitive music riffs preceding every single pursuit scene, the sometimes bizarrely abrupt casting changes from one episode to another (the radical transformations of the wife, Paty, and the son, Emilio, were especially puzzling), and the excessive, overwrought sentimentality in the aftermath of some of the atrocities can all be criticized with good reason.

That said, the overall production is a success because the acting is very, very good, and the writers and director accomplished what they set out to do: to tell a story which needed to be told, and to do so convincingly, complete with historical film clips inserted where available to document that this is not a tale of fantasy. The series was so gripping that I watched six episodes a night continuously until I finished, exhausted by the ordeal.

I was especially impressed by the ability of the lead actor (Andrés Parra) to portray how it was that Escobar was both loved and feared to such an extent. His rise, fall and ultimate unraveling were very well paced, and the acting was perfect. Other standout performances were those of El Chile, El Topo, Fabio, Marino, Pedro Motoa, El Mariachi, Marcos Herbert, Gonzalo, Cain, Kiki... the list goes on and on.

I highly recommend this series to anyone with an interest in the history of Colombia, the cocaine trade, or organized crime more generally. All of the dialogue is in very clearly articulated Spanish, so it is linguistically worthwhile for anyone who speaks Spanish as a second language. (There are subtitles in various languages, too, so the production is accessible to non-Spanish speakers as well.) Anyone who is interested in the nature of corruption should not miss this series.