Jorge Guerricaechevarría, Alex de la Iglesia’s right-hand man and one of the great screenwriters of Spanish cinema, is in charge of leading another series set in the world of drug trafficking and that has its origin in real events (Operation Nécora). ‘Clans’, which seems very ambitious to start and tries to address the different perspectives of the drug trafficking phenomenon in Galicia, ends up not standing out in anything, It stays on the surface of all the approaches and does not delve deeply enough into any of them.
Unlike the excellent ‘Fariña’, which focuses on criminals and presents them as tough, calculating and implacable men, here the story of this criminal phenomenon is given too white. The members of the Padín clan, which dominates the Cambados area, They are portrayed almost as ‘businessmen’ who are part-time involved in the drug business. and even the few doses of violence they use are very measured.
In the pot in which the series is cooked, several ingredients are added that do not end up mixing well: a love story as dull as it is predictable, a policeman obsessed with ending the Galician mafia, other corrupt agents and the family of a snitch, who lives marginalized in the town and which is the part of the plot that was most interesting a priori. None of them take off enough to sustain a series that goes on for too long (7 episodes).
On the good side of the scale, a great cast composed mostly of Galician actors: Tamar Novas (Goya Award for ‘The Sea Inside’), Melania Cruz (‘Rapa’), Chechu Salgado (Goya Award for ‘The Laws of the Border’), Diego Anido (‘The Beasts’), Xosé Antonio Touriñán (‘Fariña’), Miguel de Lira… The protagonist of the series is Clara Lago, a successful lawyer who, after the inexplicable murder of her father, discovers that he is actually a repentant drug trafficker who entered a witness protection program and left a wife and daughter in Galicia. From here on, a story whose driving force is revenge, but which becomes diluted as the branches of the story open.
Is ‘Clans’ worth watching?
- The story is weak because it does not fully define what it wants to be.
- The best thing is the legion of excellent supporting characters that appear in the series.
- It is far from other productions on the subject: ‘Fariña’, ‘Narcos’…
- The semi-open ending invites a second season, which is probably not a good idea.
- The series goes from more to less.
What other series are there to watch?
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