I now live in Mijas, Spain where the locals have made a lot of noise about this new Netflix series. There was a special showing in the town the other week with many of the actors and behind-the-cameras team present, all down I believe to the writer of the book from which it was adapted actually hailing from Mijas. Also, some of the locations were clearly filmed in neighbouring Malaga which gave me two external reasons for watching the show.
So, putting to one side my biased neighbourhood interest, how did this production shape up in the thriller stakes? Well, I have to state that the basic story itself of a little girl's being kidnapped in the rain at the big Three Kings Christmas-time festival by a couple who are unable to conceive their own child hardly seemed original.
We're then presented with two mixed-sex couples seeking the young Amaya, one pair comprising a tough stoney-faced female detective and her younger, more excitable male colleague and the other a damaged young female reporter and her older male mentor on the paper. Indeed, the series clearly focuses on the young girl reporter named Miren who takes a personal interest in the case possibly linked back to her own awful experience of years before when she was gang-raped on a beach and then became aware that a video of her horrific ordeal had found its way onto the dark web. She's the main one who refuses to give up on the kidnapped young girl long after the story has left the front page and it's her endeavour and intuition which finally breaks the case and leads the police to at last solving the years-old mystery.
I don't know personally if the Madeleine McCann case which was and still is headline news in the U. K. is as well-known in Spain but this story seemed to be inspired by it, if that's the right word, judging by events depicted here. I quite enjoyed the unusual structure of using the first four episodes to build up the mystery of Amaya's disappearance from the point of view of her concerned pursuers and then devoting the whole of the fifth episode to switch perspective to that of the kidnappers and filling in all the gaps in the process. This effectively set up the dramatic conclusion involving a tense car chase in the pouring rain with I guess the inevitable conclusion immediately following on.
I enjoyed much of this series up until it unexpectedly went Hollywood with a couple of unbelievable and unexpectedly violent plot twists which for me destroyed the credibility of the story for the sake of rather cheap, exploitative thrills. I'm well aware too that coincidence and luck has to play a part in cracking open a case like this but here the plot holes and narrative jumps were just too many and too large to ignore. I was also occasionally confused by the constant shifts in the timelines and lastly did we really need the closing teaser leading into presumably Miren's next case, it seemed a cheap and unnecessary device after the seriousness of what had gone before.
Acting-wise, the series commendably builds itself around three strong lead performances by women, Milena Smit as Miren has a very guant appearance and plays her part with suitable if sometimes overdone intensity, Cecilia Freire is good in the thankless task of the disturbed kidnapper who bends her doting husband to her will and Aixa Villagrán does well in the slightly under-developed role as the lead police detective on the case.
I was guilty of watching this show in the dubbed English language version which may have somewhat coloured my opinion of the quality of some of the acting but as programmes like this go, this was still an entertaining and reasonably convincing missing-person mystery.
So, putting to one side my biased neighbourhood interest, how did this production shape up in the thriller stakes? Well, I have to state that the basic story itself of a little girl's being kidnapped in the rain at the big Three Kings Christmas-time festival by a couple who are unable to conceive their own child hardly seemed original.
We're then presented with two mixed-sex couples seeking the young Amaya, one pair comprising a tough stoney-faced female detective and her younger, more excitable male colleague and the other a damaged young female reporter and her older male mentor on the paper. Indeed, the series clearly focuses on the young girl reporter named Miren who takes a personal interest in the case possibly linked back to her own awful experience of years before when she was gang-raped on a beach and then became aware that a video of her horrific ordeal had found its way onto the dark web. She's the main one who refuses to give up on the kidnapped young girl long after the story has left the front page and it's her endeavour and intuition which finally breaks the case and leads the police to at last solving the years-old mystery.
I don't know personally if the Madeleine McCann case which was and still is headline news in the U. K. is as well-known in Spain but this story seemed to be inspired by it, if that's the right word, judging by events depicted here. I quite enjoyed the unusual structure of using the first four episodes to build up the mystery of Amaya's disappearance from the point of view of her concerned pursuers and then devoting the whole of the fifth episode to switch perspective to that of the kidnappers and filling in all the gaps in the process. This effectively set up the dramatic conclusion involving a tense car chase in the pouring rain with I guess the inevitable conclusion immediately following on.
I enjoyed much of this series up until it unexpectedly went Hollywood with a couple of unbelievable and unexpectedly violent plot twists which for me destroyed the credibility of the story for the sake of rather cheap, exploitative thrills. I'm well aware too that coincidence and luck has to play a part in cracking open a case like this but here the plot holes and narrative jumps were just too many and too large to ignore. I was also occasionally confused by the constant shifts in the timelines and lastly did we really need the closing teaser leading into presumably Miren's next case, it seemed a cheap and unnecessary device after the seriousness of what had gone before.
Acting-wise, the series commendably builds itself around three strong lead performances by women, Milena Smit as Miren has a very guant appearance and plays her part with suitable if sometimes overdone intensity, Cecilia Freire is good in the thankless task of the disturbed kidnapper who bends her doting husband to her will and Aixa Villagrán does well in the slightly under-developed role as the lead police detective on the case.
I was guilty of watching this show in the dubbed English language version which may have somewhat coloured my opinion of the quality of some of the acting but as programmes like this go, this was still an entertaining and reasonably convincing missing-person mystery.