See Alan Dunkin’s post above. He didn’t know any Spanish until signing on to the show. Learned it for the role.
Love this show. Grantland had the perfect description of it: “Stepped on Scorcese”
In other words, not quite Goodfellas but still pretty great.
Enjoying this one so far. The actors are mostly great, the story is entertaining yet informative, and it helps that it has great source material. To be the perfect Escobar show, though, they would need to find a way to drop the voiceover, hire benicio del toro for something(not necessarily to play escobar, which he has already played in that movie, but I feel he’d be great in this like he was in traffic), and adopt an edgier atmosphere. I’m also missing the quieter reflective moments that were in Traffic, although perhaps that is to do with the change in medium.
I would describe that as ruthless, no?
Pedro Pascal is nailing it as Javier the DEA agent. Watched the first two episodes this weekend and am hooked. I actually am enjoying the narrative bits thus far, as I feel like I’m getting a nice documentary-style education on the cocaine business while I watch the story unfold. I found the information presented through the narration fascinating, and a great counterpart to the story itself. I would never have been able to keep the various players, especially the other drug lords and the M-19 people, straight if it wasn’t for the narrative.
This show and Marco Polo are the only two Netflix originals I have experience with so far, but judging form the quality of both I am going to have to start checking out more Netflix produced shows.
Bloodlines is another one you need to watch.
My wife and I went thru this over the last couple of nights. Enjoyed it quite a bit, though I didn’t realize it was gonna be an ongoing series until about halfway thru the last couple of episodes, and now I’m going to have to wait a year for more eps.
Anyway, my wife is from Cali and was in med school in Bogota during this time frame and said it was pretty accurate (more so that I expect for dramatizations) in terms of most all of the characters and events. One or two killings attributed to Escobar were actually done by a different member of the cartel, but otherwise it was awesome to have her running commentary on what it was like to be there for all of this insanity in person: like the narcos in the hospital wanting to make sure she could save their eyes so they could aim (she was an ophthalmologist) and them offering to do ‘jobs’ for her in thanks for treating them as if it were nothing. She can also pick out accents and was like ‘oh, that character’s accent it more Bogota than Cali’ which blows my mind.
That sounds like a great way to watch it. And it’s nice to hear that they kept it pretty close to reality, you never know with those disclaimers at the beginning.
I just finished the show this week and really enjoyed it, especially the acting. There were a few moments where I thought it was weird how they almost passed over the larger scale violence perpetrated by Escobar (except for the plane of course), but in the end I think it made sense since the show was clearly focused more on the personal scale.
Between this and Mr. Robot this was the best late summer/early fall stretch of TV I remember for a while.
Oh and I watched the first episode of Bloodline last night from the recommendation in this thread. I’m not quite sold on it yet, but I’ll give it a couple more episodes.
This show was excellent. Bloodlines takes a while to warm up, but man that was a great show.
Yeah… Just watched the first episode of this. Loved it, but the accent is really, really weird. Not native at all and really off putting given that pretty much everybody else speaking Spanish in the episode seems native.
It’s a huge miscast, at least for me, and it’s definitely going to erode my appreciation of the series (for something this naturalistic, the suspension of disbelief goes off the rails…).
I hope his accent improves through the season.
Listen, the world had to put up with Christopher Lambert’s “Scottish” accent for years. You can deal with this for a few seasons, damn it.
This feels more like a person with a thick French accent playing a Texas cowboy… :P
Still love the series so far, though :P
Season 2 scheduled for release on September 2.
— Alan
Upon that date, I shall line up all the episodes and give season 2 a hearty snort.
With a hundred dollar bill?
— Alan
So…
… season 2 got released yesterday, and I since I had to get some photo work done I sorta binge-watched the thing while. Liked it as much as the first season, but if you look at the bigger picture the pacing is really different given that the first 10 episodes cover his rise up until the escape from La Catedral (about 15 years) whereas the second season only had the final year of Escobar’s life left.
Enjoyed the atmosphere and moments such as a particular conversation of Pablo and his father. Obviously enough, there’s also one setpiece staged as a long tracking shot. Still not sold on Murphy’s/Holbrook’s narration, but I’m under the impression that season 2 at least slightly dialed it back. Really dug the actord playing Don Berna and Limon.
[spoiler]The Judy Moncada character appears to be fully fictional and not based on any real person. Felt a bit like fillter material due to that. Also, killing off Horatio Carillo - whom many considered as Narcos’s interpretatiin of Hugo Martinez - clearly was a plot thing to give Pablo a bit of a mid-season triumph in what otherwise would be been a straight downward trajectory. Could have done without the scene in which Limon accidentally shoots Marizka… ugh… seemed stupid and a bit out of place for the show.
As for the finale… as some here already guessed, the last episode sets up a Cali-focused season 3 should Netflix renew the show.[/spoiler]
Binge watched the first 8 episodes over the long weekend, and like this season even more than the first. More polished and assured, and some intelligent dramatizations that make the story more rewarding without straying meaningfully from established facts.
Acting and writing are first rate, and I’m genuinely surprised that it seems relatively fair and balanced when depicting motivations/intelligence/competence of all parties. Obviously Pablo gets a bit of a sympathetic spin, but that’s fine as he’s so compelling a protagonist.
Netflix is really hitting it out of the park these days.
Does it still have the voiceover?
[quote=“Ginger_Yellow, post:39, topic:77133, full:true”]
Does it still have the voiceover?[/quote]
As I wrote: yes. But there seems to be less of it.