★★★
“Back behind bars.”
While this Spanish series started off back in 2015, it perhaps suffers through not having been watched until recently – in the wake of shows like Wentworth and The Yard. There are too many elements which left me feeling “Hang on: haven’t I seen that somewhere before?” For instance, the thread where a motherly inmate gets Alzheimer’s and pleads with her cell-mates to kill her before it destroys her mind entirely? Liz Birdsworth, in seasons six and seven of Wentworth. So, I guess your opinion on this may vary, depending on your familiarity with the genre. Also like Wentworth, the main protagonist is someone who is not a hardened criminal – but ends up becoming one, over the course of the show.
In this case, that is Macarena Ferreiro (Civantos). She gets seven years after becoming the patsy for her boss’s fraud. She stumbles across the location of a robbery haul, which brings her into conflict with… Well, just about everyone, but the key persona is Zulema Zahir (Lobato), the top dog of the prison. The five seasons (40 episodes in total) revolve around their love-hate relationship, though as usual, there are a good number of side stories and supporting characters, on both sides of the bars. Again, some of these may feel rather familiar, with the show going through the usual tropes of power struggles, warders good and bad, and criminal activities. It’s solid enough (and offers more nudity than the other shows, if that’s of interest!), just all too familiar at this point.
The show was originally cancelled after the second series, but after a significant pause was then revived for a third and fourth season. That delay required significant cast changes, due to the cast having moved on – Civantos’s other commitments meant Macarena became a secondary character. They also had to “transfer” to a new prison, as their existing sets had been taken over by another show (Money Heist, also on Netflix). But the real weirdness begins after the end of Season 4, which has an air of absolute finality to it. But, wait! There’s more! For Vis a vis: El oasis, followed. Set a decade later, Macarena and Zulema have teamed up, to become an armed robbery duo.
They recruit some of their old pals to pull off the dreaded ‘one last heist’, robbing the wedding of a cartel boss’s daughter. Needless to say, it goes about as well as ‘one last heists’ always do. Initially, it feels a bit like an unwanted supplement. But it ends up as probably the most relevant to this site, with the women holed up in a motel, in the middle of the desert, and under siege by the boss’s army. By going outside the prison walls, this offers most scope for genuine invention, and it’s likely why I felt this to be the strongest season. I just wish I hadn’t had to go through four series of generic prison drama to reach it.
Created by: Iván Escobar, Esther Martínez Lobato, Álex Pina, Daniel Écija
Star: Maggie Civantos, Najwa Nimri, Carlos Hipólito, Roberto Enríquez
a.k.a. Vis A Vis (Face to Face)