baron-9

This is about Lucia, a young woman much in the tradition of James Bond. Her hidden talents reveal themselves over the course of the series. The story involves several interrelated characters, but not too many to keep track of. I learned a lot (starting with little knowledge) about life in Spain up to World War II and into it. The title refers to an English neighborhood near a large mine, that was controlled by England at the outset.

Each episode leaves something hanging, which forces you to watch the next. Fortunately, the next was just as good as the last. The acting and casting were great.

I was first captured by the beauty of everything, especially the old Spanish buildings (including houses). It made me want to go there.

The music was excellent, if you listened to it. It was not intrusive, so you need to remember to listen.

Technical note: The version we saw had "closed captions" in both English and Spanish, and real subtitles in English, but they overlapped, which meant I had to turn off the cc. Occasionally the English parts were hard to understand, but there were not many and none seemed crucial.

I will not repeat all the praise from other comments. After the end of the complete series on Max, I agree. But music can make or break a movie or series. Other examples (in my opinion) of great music are Wolf Hall (Debbie Wiseman) and Schtisel (Avi Belleli). Max Richter, has written music for many other movies and series. In this case, it is amazingly good.

The beginning theme was haunting. I knew it was based on some chord sequence that I had heard before, but I did not know where. Then I heard a recording of Corelli's "La Folia" (or "La Follia", Violin Sonata No. 12 in D minor) and recognized it immediately. Some of Corelli's variations resemble Richter's version. (Corelli was not the first to use this old theme.) In the Max version, we get an option to "skip introduction". We did not take that option, because that is where the main theme is. Much of Richter's music consists of re-compositions of the music of others, particular baroque composers. In this series, he also does this with music from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons". In general, the music is not intrusive or overwhelming, and it is appropriate for the scenes. I like to think that Vivaldi, Corelli, and Bach would approve of the "modern" version of their works. It certainly enhances this series.

We gave this a rating of 10 a few years ago. We started to watch Season 5, which appeared recently, and then decided to watch Seasons 1-4 again. It still gets a 10. All the actors are good, as is the writing. But Nicola Walker is exceptional. I do not want to discourage others from watching later seasons, even by noting the changes. I just want to make clear that our rating applies to Seasons 1-4 only.

The music deserves a comment. It begins with a poetic song about being upside down because you can't reach paradise with your feet on the ground. I suppose that someone could see a connection with the story, but I did not. I did find the song worth hearing each time. After that, the music is entirely different and extremely romantic, often with a dramatic build-up at the end of each episode. As a music fan, I would put this in a category with On the Waterfront, Splendor in the Grass, and Wolf Hall (putting aside movies meant for music at the outset, or about music).