Sequía

The drought on channel 4 in the UK, it has all the clichés, a cop with a backstory, she's serious because she wears black vests and jackets in 100 degree heat, and her hair is in a ponytail.

Apparently if you want to spot a criminal type in Portugal just look for a guy in a black vest, and unlikely backstory for cop no 2 is his crippled child was helped by a rich lady so he has to go to spain to check out a dead body.

Like lockdown sourdough bread all the ingredients are here but for me the dough doesn't rise, there is no unique element, the lady cops mum looks younger than she does.

Some of the cast members of ministerio del tiempo are here which gave a glimmer of hope which sadly died a death as this incredibly boring show trundled on.

Walter presents has lost its charm, before we die another earth shatteringly dull show in scandi or UK format, Gold-diggers was excellent and Astrid in Paris, the rest are duds pull up your socks channel 4.

Walter Presents is a streaming platform that seems to out of its way to collect all the rubbish European TV programs and then rebroadcasts them through various stations. This series is one of those examples. The story makes little sense, the way it's told is really very silly and incomprehensible. If this is how Spanish police are supposed to operate, it is quite unbelievable. The lead investigator dresses like she's off to a gym for a Pilates session. As Wilton all programs from RTVE, the sound quality is poor so much of the dialog is inaudible. Overall, the series is not engaging and simply not worth watching!

I watched this all in a period of thirty six hours. It was the detective series that had everything - rich and powerful families, junkies, anarchist protestors, cops with a plausible back story, cross-border events. Yet the scriptwriters managed to mesh all of these disparate strands into a coherent whole.

The story was told in the present with flashbacks into the past. Each flashback brought us tantalisingly closer to the original murderer and why others were being committed. It was clear though that the present-day killings, although related to the bodies found during the drought, were being committed by someone different from the original assassin.

The script cleverly imputed different motives and reasons for the murders in the flashbacks and led the viewer astray on more than one occasion as the investigation progressed.

There was a final couple of twists at the end. The cops had caught their miscreant who had confessed but they were unaware that it was an elaborate game; the real killer had got away with it. Nonetheless, justice was done in a different way.

I was really impressed by this and I recommend it.