Reviews

I just watched the final episode of this series, which was more like a mini-series because it was reportedly always intended to be only two seasons.

Season one focused on Maria Fuente's discovery of and investigation into her illegal adoption. Child trafficking is a very topical issue in Spain, what with the 'Stolen Babies' scandal that is still unfolding.

If you are unfamiliar with the scandal, beginning in the years of the Franco dictatorship and continuing at least until the 80s, an unknown number of infants were stolen from their biological parents and sold to 'better' families for adoption via a nationwide network of health care workers, Roman Catholic officials and government officials. Estimates are that up to 300,000 babies were abducted and adopted.

When the series begins, Maria is a successful lawyer in Madrid, with a prominent judge for a father, a socialite mother, a maternal uncle who is a well known physician and a spoiled, playboy cousin who is also a doctor and who has been hitting on her unsuccessfully for years. After learning of her adoption, Maria finds a lawyer who specializes in helping victims of illegal adoptions, who is himself a child trafficking victim. She also finds an I.T. expert to help her look into records. In the process, Maria develops a romantic relationship with the lawyer -- and rejects the computer expert who is also smitten with her. With their help she finds and meets her biological mother and sister, who live together in poverty and squalor in Andalusia. As it turns out, her mother is an alcoholic prostitute and her uneducated sister's boyfriend is a cheesy small time crook. Her mother is happy to find out the child she believed dead is actually alive and has had a good life. The sister, however, is envious, both because of Maria's wealth and success and because of her mother's automatic love for her sister.

As Maria is trying to help her biological family and build a relationship with them, as well as trying to discover how much her adoptive family knew, she is kidnapped. Eventually it is believed she has been murdered. In fact, she has been sold to sex traffickers and is a prisoner in a sex-club in China.

Season 2 focused on Maria's return to Spain after her escape and her effort to uncover the truth behind everything, including murders, government corruption and even pharma fraud. The lives of her family and friends have changed dramatically since her disappearance, muddying things further. In order to get to the bottom of things and plan her revenge, Maria feigns post-traumatic-shock-related-amnesia.

In my opinion the second season was generally much more exciting than the first. The series denouement was very good, with a few surprises -- including a twist at the end that could even open the door to a third season.

I watched it faithfully from beginning to end. Spain's Antena3 played two episodes together each Wednesday, so it only took six weeks to watch.

In my opinion it was pretty good. Good dialog, great sets and costumes, and all the performances were good, except Derek Jacobi's, which was better than good -- it was terrific. The female lead, Alessandra Mastronardi, is a lovely actress.

At first it kind of bothered me that they cast an actor in the lead who looks rather like Leonardo DiCaprio did when he was younger, but I got over it. Kevin Zegers' performance was fine, but the resemblance was a bit of a nagging thing for me sometimes. I didn't watch this series because I wanted to be reminded of the 1997 film. I wanted something different -- and this was very different -- in a good way.

It had some interesting bits about Irish history in it. It even inspired me to do some on-line research and learn about The Ulster Covenant.

The Neve Campbell character's being coerced to spy for Germany was a story line that seemed pretty purposeless. It added nothing and just went nowhere.

Overall, I'd say it was worth tuning in to each week. I'm hoping there will be a sequel since it ended with the main characters and some of the minor ones sailing off on the Titanic to death or survival, who knows...