Do you want to see a show that has as much wealthy family drama as Succession but also has a murder mystery as part of it? Maybe one that has outrageous plot turns like a telenovela? Then Who Killed Sara?, a new Mexican drama on Netflix, will be right up your alley. Read on for more.
Opening Shot: A group of young adults are on a boat in the middle of a lake. They’re videotaping everything, and “Living La Vida Loca” is playing.
The Gist: Alex Guzmán (Leo Deluglio) and his sister Sara (Ximena Lamadrid) are on that boat with their friends, Rodolfo Lazcano (Andrés Baida) and his brother José María (Polo Morín). Sara and Rodolfo are dating. They’re all having a good time.
Sara climbs into a rig to parasail, but as she’s up there, her harness starts tearing. Alex tells the Lazcanos to slow down but they speed up. Eventually, the harness breaks and she plunges hard into the water. Alex dives in to save her but it’s too late.
Eighteen years later, we see Alex (Manolo Cardona) in prison; he has somehow taken the fall for Sara’s death. We see in flashback that the powerful family patriarch, César Lazcano (Ginés García Millán) somehow convinces Alex to take the fall, in payback to all the family provided for Alex, Sara and their mother, and to protect the Lazcano family name. But, with Alex getting an early release from a 30-year sentence, he’s looking for payback.
On the day Rodolfo (Alejandro Nones) is promoted to CEO of his father’s casino business, his brother José María (Eugenio Siller), always resentful that Alex was forced to take the fall, wants to announce his engagement to his boyfriend Lorenzo Rossi (Luis Roberto Guzmán), but César puts the kibosh on that. As far as César is concerned, José María and his boyfriend are both single and heterosexual, at least as far as the public is concerned. José María’s coming out is what lost him the CEO position to begin with.
During the gathering, which includes César’s wife Mariana (Claudia Ramírez) and young daughter Elisa (Carolina Miranda), Alex hacks into the casino’s security system and plays on all the monitors a recorded message that he knows who killed Sara and that he shouldn’t have taken the fall for it. As César tries to figure out how Alex hacked in and Rodolfo goes to visit Alex’s house — Alex makes like he’s shooting Roldofo with a finger gun — Alex finds out that Rodolpho may not have been the one who killed Sara.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Part mystery thriller like The Undoing, part wealthy family drama like Succession, part telenovela.
Our Take: There’s a fair amount to like about Who Killed Sara? (Original title: ¿Quién Mató a Sara?), created by José Ignacio Valenzuela. Manolo Cardona is pretty compelling as Alex, with his slow burn anger on full display. Millán exudes pure molten evil as the powerful César. The first episode packs in more than enough character development to get us sucked into the story, at least as far as Alex, Rodolfo and Jose Maria are concerned.
But there are a few flaws of logic that make us wonder. For one: Alex is assisted in his mission to get revenge on the Lazcano family by a fellow inmate who gives him a safe deposit box key, which ends up being full of cash. We see him buy a car and a bunch of computer equipment. All of a sudden, a guy in his mid-30s who’s been in prison since 2003 knows his way around modern technology well enough to record a video message and transmit it to the Lazcano casino. Hm. Wonder what kind of on-the-job-training is provided in those Mexican prisons?
We see that the house he and Sara grew up in is still in his family’s name, despite the deaths of Sara and, not long after that, their mother. Sure, it’s overgrown on the outside and has cobwebs on the inside, but how is that possible, especially if Alex’s family didn’t have a ton of money? It’s also a pretty nice, modern house in expensive Mexico City. Were they really poor, did César buy that house for them, or were they just upper middle class?
It all speaks to a mystery that will have a lot of tentacles, mainly revolving around César, who seems to have his head so far up his butt that he tells his grandson while hunting that he doesn’t want another “f—-t” in the family, as if this show is taking place in the 1980s. Just how milquetoast are his sons that they continue to let their father stomp all over them even though they’re pushing 40? Apparently Elisa was so young when this happened, she has no idea who Alex is. So that means this has been kept silent all these years? How will she factor into all this?
Like most shows of this type, the possibilities seem endless. But it also seems like it could quickly get out of narrative control. So many characters, so many conflicts and dramas…. it’s hard to maintain. We’ll see if some of the logic holes we have right now get closed up during the ten-episode first season.
Sex and Skin: A flashback of Rodolfo and Sara having sex. Adolpho’s wife Sofia (Ana Lucía Domínguez) tries to have sex with him in the present but he’s preoccupied.
Parting Shot: After a mysterious texter tells Alex that Rodolfo might not have killed Sara, he turns just in time to see gunshots come through his windows. As he hides, he contemplates just how dangerous his seeking revenge is going to be.
Sleeper Star: Elisa, played by Carolina Miranda, seems like the most no-nonsense member of the Lazcano family and the one that’s least cowed by her father. It’ll be interesting to see how she inserts herself into this story.
Most Pilot-y Line: “Go find that motherfucker and bring him to me, whatever it takes. If he harms my family, I’ll put him back in prison. Or in the grave, like his mother and sister,” says César to one of his minions. Oooh, you’re going to put him back in prison? That didn’t come off aas threatening as it seemed, did it?
Our Call: STREAM IT. Who Killed Sara? has a few logic problems, but its overall vibe is energetic enough, with good performances, to keep viewers’ attention.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
Stream Who Killed Sara? On Netflix