Brief Story Line
When a notorious serial killer Simon Lago (Luis Callejo) was captured by the police on Christmas eve, he was taken to Baruca, a prison that also treat psychiatric prisoners. Hugo (Alberto Ammann), the warden who was supposed to be spending the night with his children were called in to properly accept the prisoner. Meanwhile some of the prisoners in Baruca also had their own agenda, including the feared Cherokee (Daniel Albaladejo).
Unfortunately for Hugo and the prison guards, a group of mercenaries led by Lennon (José Luis García Pérez) were hired to break Simon out of Baruca. Things got further complicated when Hugo was threatened to do something against his will and had no choice but to keep Simon safe by any means necessary.
So what would happen to all of them? You can find out in the first season of this series.
End of Brief Story Line
Just as I hoped it would be, this series was fast paced and intense throughout the season with a simple enough story at the start but turned out to be more complicated as it progressed. Apparently there were some intrigues behind the breakout and plot twists as well. The first episode took me a while to get used to since there were so many people involved, and the unfamiliarity of the cast did not help either. Slowly though, as I became more familiar with the characters, it was more enjoyable. And once the mercenaries started to break in the prison, it was easier to understand since action is kind of a universal language.
While watching this series, I personally felt that Hugo's arc story was a bit similar to Jack Bauer of the famous TV series titled 24, plus there was some timeline shown on screen as well (though I did not really check if it was done in real time). Some people also mentioned that the series combined elements of Prison Break and La Casa De Papel (aka Money Heist). Not too sure about that comparison since Prison Break was more of the story where people try to break out of prison using complicated but intelligently crafted methods, while this series focused on breaking in using only brute force and limited strategy. As for Money Heist, the only similarities I can think of would be one group of people confined in a building while the other group tried to get in and capture them & maybe because both are Spanish Series?
In term of building up the suspense, I thought this one did it pretty well. It was thrilling with plenty of gun shooting, explosions and brutal killings (likely the reason the series was classified for 16+ due to its violence). I think my favorites would have to be episode 2 and 4 where they were totally intense. I also felt that episode 5 offered some more surprising twists. As I approached final episode, I began to feel that the series would not have been completed since there were more and more issues need to be resolved, which would be impossible to clear in 1 episode. And turned out my feeling was true that it had a cliffhanger ending. It was pretty upsetting as I was under the impression that this was a limited series. Plus there was no news yet at the time I wrote this post whether this will be renewed or not.
Aside from the names I mentioned above, there were many other cast as well. The characters who had quite significant role in the story were Dr. Elisa (Bárbara Goenaga), the prison guards Bastos (Xabier Deive) and Willy (César Mateo), the attackers Richi (Fran Berenguer) and Sara (Laia Manzanares), the psychiatric patient/prisoner Manuela (Cecilia Freire), Hugo's eldest daughter Laura (Maria Caballero) and few others. The series was created by Xosé Morais & Victoriano Sierra Ferreiro who have vast experience in writing Spanish series together and all episodes were directed by Óscar Pedraza.
The other thing that I thought could have been done better was the endless bullets. I mean come on, this is not like in the old days when we were fine with seeing machine guns & pistols that seemed to have unlimited bullets. The only time we ever saw they ran out of bullets was in the final episode. This made it a bit ridiculous and unrealistic. But other than that, I am still ok with the action. Overall to me this is actually a pretty entertaining series with its fast paced high octane action and suspense + intensity and few plot twists. Unfortunately though, I am not sure yet if we ever going to see the conclusion, and that bullets part was a bit of a letdown. So if you are interested in seeing some of those attributes in a series, then you could give it a try. Alternatively you can wait till there is official announcement of second season renewal, to avoid investing your time unnecessarily. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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