Thursday's Widows

This was a Netflix "recommendation" for me. So I checked out a few minutes of the first episode, and unlike most Netflix series where I lose interest pretty quickly, or make it through the first three or four episodes, I found this Mexican series strangely addictive.

The setting: A wealthy gated community somewhere in central Mexico (it was shot in Huixquilucan, between Toluca and Mexico City). The plot focuses on five couples and their families. Each have their secrets, problems and tensions within their marriages.

--There is the failing politician from a corrupt family and his always pregnant wife and their seven kids.

--A entrepreneur of some sort from Spain, and his wife. He is domineering, and physically abusive to her.

--An executive of a Dutch/Japanese firm who runs their Mexico business, and his socially ambitious wife.

--A female real estate agent who has to peddle property in the gated community because her husband is a layabout and pothead and she has bigger ambitions for her school aged son.

--A highly successful plastic surgeon and his wife -- his creation -- who he constantly wants to remake.

Each episode focuses on one family and is told mostly from the wife's point of view, with some journeys into what the guys are up to (it's mostly frat house type male bonding and tamed down machismo, e.g. Who plays the best tennis, who has the most audacious watch).

Yes, it gets a little soap opera / telenovela like. But like a soap, you want to know more and more about each situation, especially as the pathologies and desperation -- lots of money issues -- are slowly revealed. We also get to see some of the social, racial problems of Mexico in an Upstairs Downstairs sort of way. In some ways their bubble community resembles upper middle class America circa 1975.

One disappointment: the American English dubbing / translation. With the guys it is non stop "bro" and "dude." Curious what that is in Mexican Spanish. It is seriously annoying. Not sure middle aged, middle class men speak like that -- in any language.

All in all a fun and unexpected binge watch. Trashy yes, but good fun. Do not look for seriousness here.

This is an example of the new type of Telenovela from Mexico that deals with the socio-economic divide that plagues the country. There are the usual rich vs poor, indigenous vs "eurochilango" and social class dynamics. The story has a "Peyton Place" type theme, with the usual dark secrets that are buried beneath the facade of apparent wealth and respectability. Some of the subplots never develop into anything and one wonders why they have been since they contribute very little to the overall story. There is little progression or character development, and viewers are left hanging since it never completes the story arc. Entertaining if one knows the culture and the slang, but nothing special at all. There are much better examples of the "new Telenovela". The House of Flowers comes to mind!

I kept watching till the end, because I simply had to know what the hell happened to these three guys who floated dead in the pool, as we came to see in the very first scene of this Mexican mini-series. Well, the answer fortunately came, towards the end of the last episode, but I cannot say that I was very satisfied with it, or with the whole series, to be honest.

The setting in a posh community for the super rich is promising, and the format of six episodes in which we alternately follow six of the main families that live there, is a nice find, as is the gradually exposing of all their hidden dark secrets. But this sounds way better on paper than it actually turned out to be. The secrets (mostly due to the husbands) aren't very spectacular (one looses his job, another his money, a third mistreats his wife, that sort of things), and surprisingly enough these various problems hardly ever got intertwined with those of the others, but stayed in fact 6 isolated stories.

While most of the wives were very flamboyant and powerful, most of the guys were whining whimps and extremely annoying. Their ultimate pact, that led to the afore-mentioned opening scene, came totally out-of the blue and seemed in no way in sync with their supposed intelligence; surely they could have, with combined forces, have come up with a less dramatic and definitive solution to end their family problems.

The actors playing the wives were pretty good, if you can live with all the Latin temperament that most of them lavishly presented; the male actors however were rather underwhelming. There were also some teens, who did a reasonable good job, but their story-lines unfortunately led to nothing.

It could've been so much better. I hated the end? It lacked of strength.

But the show was very entertaining, the actors where so good, the dialogue was so real, the locations was super cool but I wish they've shown more of the contrast of life in Mexico.

That's said, other bad thing was some of the Wardrobe, not realistic in how that 1% dresses Elon Mexico.

Omar Chaparro was a very pleasant surprise, he is usually doing annoying characters on tv, this one was strong and dramatic and serious acting suits him.

But oh lord the en was so meh.... Now I am off to read the book and that may change my review.

I must admit that this is not my type of series, about rich families with no personality, hypocrites keeping appearances. Everything is expressed in a very grotesque way, or so I hope, I have never met no one like that.

My review doesn't start well, but having said that the series captivated me and I found myself coming back for more. It is very psychological and psychopatic. It left me satisfied.

The tension and suspense are present at all times, and what happens in this community goes just too far! These families live in a bubble and when it cracks a little panic begins to spread, they don't even know how to fry and egg, so they panic. Fear of failure is the clue.

The level of all actors is very good, realistic just like real life, almost as if you lived among them. The criminal story with an unexpected and grotesque ending that make you think are great.

I recommend it for the tension, psychology and morality of this story. When you think you have everything, but you just don't simply know how to live life.