Decent... could have been better with a bigger budget

I've "only" seen 28 episodes so far but this for me is what's good and bad about it:


The Good:

The detailed script, it explains pretty well how things went down and why. It seems relatively honest even if it contains fiction too obviously.

Most of the actors are identical to the real people. When you watch documentaries
on the subject you immediately recognize all the characters. The casting was excellent.

Most of the soundtrack is good although too repetetive at times.

The production looks "fresh", the cinematography looks good.

Pablos crew and family are entertaining to watch, and the show has plenty of humor.

Last but not least, the obvious: Andres Parra who carries the show basically with his fantastic multilayered performance.


The Bad:

The telenovela-feel that sometimes is there and sometimes isn't.

The action-sequences as mentioned before.

The props, guns, and packages of drugs look much lighter than they are supposed to be. It doesn't look real.

The "gringos" aren't real americans.

Weak acting at times in the smaller roles.

Too many repetetive scenes with victims familys, which I guess it's an hommage to them.


In a way it feels weird since it's on one hand it wants to show respect to the people murdered and on the other hand they have lots of humor in the portrayal of Pablo and his crew. So the glorifying point is a valid one. It does remind you of Sopranos at times, even if it's a telenovela version of it.




Ed Powers = Woody Allen

OP summarized the show very well (and humorously) tbqh and I agree.

It's a very modest production that is worthwhile to watch with a very in-depth look at Pablo Escobar, his inner circle, and the political side of his years as "el Patron del Mar." Definitely has many significant drawbacks as mentioned such as the low budget, very bad VFX, extremely repetitive, limited and predictable music, and the soap opera telenovel style for the way the story is structured but also visually how there's so much light in every scene that it kinda kills the realism in those moments.

While it is certainly very drawn out and frankly too long of a series (I saw the 74 eps on Netflix, could've been 30-40 absolutely no problem at all without losing anything of significance), there are a lot of positives. You get to see an everyday perspective from Pablo and every other side during that time, you get to know a lot of characters very in depth such as Pablo's hitmen (I grew to like Chili a lot as I got far into the series) and more details in how certain events were planned and happened.

The low budget does have a bit of a impact in every episode I think as the bad acting and writing makes for a lot of ridiculous moments such as basically every single death which comes off as very lame and characters just jumping out in the open and waiting to be shot by a guy in a helicopter. Furthermore, I really hated how bad the writing and acting made a lot of Escobar's hitmen look like absolute buffoons and bumbling idiots many times over. Even so, I carried on watching cause the series was still very interesting to watch the day to day behaviour and actions, and especially how Pablo's character arc moves from relaxed to more aggressive when he starts to lose it in the final 40% of the series when things get heavier.

For me I think the music was one of the most annoying things in the series, even if I managed to get over it by around 20 episodes in and find the humour in correctly predicting which theme (of the five or so in the entire series) would start to play in certain moments. Sure, I think the opening theme is somewhat catchy to a certain extent, especially after hearing it enough, but I don't think it's very good at all and not at all appropriate for the series, just like almost all the music that endlessly repeats. Coming from Narcos to this, the music took a massive dropoff, together with the production value and acting of course.

One thing I'm still somewhat split on is the depiction of Pablo. In some ways I think they nailed it in terms of his appearance and weight, the fast speaking and almost nervous tone at times, but in others I feel like he comes off as not a very frightening man at all in almost an unintentional comedic way. I would say that perhaps the first quarter of the series he's more of the latter, but deeper into the series when he starts to turn more into a madman I would say the portrayal appears to be more representative of the man. Still on the whole perhaps not quite as terrifying as what I imagine the real man was like, but not bad.

For anyone wanting to watch this show though, give it a few episodes before you decide you're going to stop or continue. I didn't enjoy the first two episodes very much and the series came off as somewhat lame, but the third episode on it started to get better and I enjoyed it enough to continue to the end. Overall it has a lot of drawbacks as I mentioned that prevent it from being a great series, but it's still a fairly good watch and I'm glad I did.