Sky Atlantic’s four-part adaptation of Robert Wilson’s Spanish novels plants Marton Csokas’ brooding Chief Inspector Javier Falcón amid Seville’s sun-bleached plazas and shadowy alleyways. Two two-part stories unfold: first a restaurateur’s ritualised suicide and the resurfacing of Falcón’s late father’s damning journals, then the torture murder of a businessman whose past links to Pinochet’s Chile expose a paedophile ring protected by the CIA. The city’s baroque architecture, shot by cinematographers Lula Carvalho and David Raedeker, doubles as both postcard and prison, while composer Paul Leonard-Morgan’s flamenco-inflected score keeps tension coiled beneath the heat haze.
Writer Sarah Phelps shifts the action from Wilson’s post-Franco Spain to a contemporary European hotspot where old fascist networks still trade favours with American intelligence. Hayley Atwell’s journalist Consuelo Jiménez and Santiago Cabrera’s ambitious Judge Calderón provide Falcón with bedsheet intrigue and bureaucratic menace, yet the emotional core is family: Kerry Fox’s brittle sister Manuela and James Floyd’s doomed nephew Rafael force the detective to confront the suicide of his own mother and the possibility that his celebrated artist father documented every sin on canvas.
The Telegraph’s James Walton caught the tone exactly: viewers can treat the show’s operatic solemnity as either high camp or high art, and both readings are valid. When Falcón finally snaps and takes retribution into his own hands, the camera lingers on his blood-splattered face against azulejo tiles, leaving justice and sanity equally cracked.
Production Details
Sky Atlantic / 1 Season / 4 Episodes / 2012
Showrunner(s): Rebecca Keane, Michele Buck, Huw Kennair-Jones
Writer(s): Sarah Phelps, Stephen Butchard
Producer(s): Julia Stannard
Music: Paul Leonard-Morgan
Main Cast
Marton Csokas as Javier Falcón
Hayley Atwell as Consuelo Jiménez
Charlie Creed-Miles as Luis Ramírez
Santiago Cabrera as Esteban Calderón
Emilia Fox as Inés Conde de Tejada
Kerry Fox as Manuela Falcón
James Floyd as Rafael Falcón
Natalia Tena as Cristina Ferrera
