Il sospetto

This is a Spanish telenovela that tries to masquerade as a murder mystery. The acting is not great as the lines are delivered in the breathless monotone of Castilian Spanish. The actors all sound as if they are whispering their lines. Coupled with poor audio engineering, the dialog at times is impossible to hear or understand. The story takes many twists and turns, and at times defies logic. It's entertaining in its own way as long as viewers don't analyze it too deeply, but instead, just go with the flow. At times, the narrative is really dragged out and what took 8 long episodes could have easily been told in 4 episodes.

Season 2 is much worse than the first season. It follows the Telenovela pattern of multiple storylines, secrets and lies, with some very dubious medical ideas woven into the plot. The continuous banter of Spanish French rivalry becomes tedious after a while, as does the fact that the supposedly "French" detectives speak Spanish, even when speaking privately with each other. It's all very unreal!

Super suspenseful, and never predictable. The intricate story manages to cover a lot of ground over the span of few episodes, while remaining very character-focused. If it had gotten more international exposure, it probably would have been renewed for many more seasons.

While it is not completely fair to review a title without having seen it all in this case I have to admit that it was the disappointment advising me to proceed anyway.

BS starts well with a nice setting (in terms of the idea behind a small- town family crime, not in terms of the budget for photography and scenic design: that is pretty poor for sure), a gripping mystery, lots of people to get to know and sympathetic protagonists (and "villains"). But by the 3rd-4th episode (more than halfway still to go) the writers run out of ideas and everything falls apart: not even the actors believe in what they're doing and the drama-thriller becomes a soap full of tears, fake tension, stupid cops, even more stupid villains and huge plot holes.

Actually you can't blame the actors much with the lines/scenes they're provided but nonetheless you'll find yourself hoping for someone to kill someone else to show some sign of REAL life.

Enjoy it until it gets boring and unbelievable, then drop it and imagine how it could have ended: you'll do a better job than the writers for sure.

A humble suggestion for the writers: if you need to fill a certain format and have a good idea for a setting and a finale (at least i hope so for the "finale" part, otherwise it would make no sense how you dragged everything this way) don't expect that creating countless convoluted ways to get to the point will do the trick. Paradoxically a little less poorly designed "clues" and "drama" behind every single character and some more character depth would have helped to get far enough from a soap for 70yo grandmas or a bad "Columbo" episode. Unfortunately everyone acts so dumbly and superficially that you soon start not caring for them.

The story is good, but the acting is so bad, is torture! The best acting was Carmen the mother of Alicia... I give it to her. I hope if I go missing I don't have these 2 idiots investigating my case! So many things in the middle that makes no sense, I guess they want to confuse the audience but is such a bad technique that we are lost as well as the actors... I watched it all the way to the end against my own will just to find out who did it! Also Laura wears these horrible pants that doesn't fit her properly, please burn the freaking gray pants and buy something that better suits your body, that way maybe she can walk normal... or maybe is just me lol.

I must admit I didn't expect Bajo Sospecha to be half as good when I started watching it - but pretty soon it had me hooked!

The two seasons are pretty different from each other, in my opinion, with the second being better. The first one, although it had a pretty engaging plotline, failed in the character development department. Instead of making us identify with the detectives, it invested a lot in the characters of the family, the suspects, which for me was a mistake, as they would always be doubted by the viewer.

However, the first season set up a pretty good foundation for the second one, especially in its depiction of undercover work. In the second season we were used to the way Victor and his partner would work and the massive expansion of the suspect (and victim) list was challenging, but not difficult to follow. The character development in the second season is totally different from the first, and excellent, I believe. Things get much more personal.

However, I loved both seasons, because at the very least they kept me on the edge of my seat and the twists were endless. The first one won me because of the singular mystery, while the second one relied more on character development (still the mystery was very hard to solve until the last episode or two). To this I'd like to add the excellent performances of all actors in both seasons. I couldn't identify one weak link in any of the major characters. My personal favourite, other than Victor, was a certain character common between the seasons, who reappeared entirely unexpectedly in the second season to become a main character.