Narcos

As a TV antihero, Escobar is an enigma. But I can say that Narcos is nevertheless addictive, compelling, shocking, and even educational.

Catching Escobar then becomes an exciting and suspenseful story arc, and makes Narcos the first cool show of the new season.

The show could do better with its shallow portrayal of its female characters, but fans of mob dramas should otherwise find everything they want. The narrative picks up its pace as the season progresses into a final run of episodes that feature the most suspenseful sequences Narcos has ever had.

Moura as Escobar doesn’t bring the overall manic and sometimes comic intensity of Al Pacino’s Tony Montana in Scarface. He’s never dull, though, giving Narcos a thoroughly sinister presence who’s capable of anything and will stop at nothing.

Narcos is frequently funny and just stylized enough to amplify the entertainment value without minimizing the gravity of the subject matter. It’s an eminently bingeable show even as it makes a strong case for moderate consumption.

Finding out how Escobar rose in power and status to become a murderous megalomaniacal drug lord is as fascinating as it is frightening. This is due in large part to the masterful performance Brazilian actor Wagner Moura delivers as Escobar. Menacing but never melodramatic, Moura is exceptionally convincing and subtle.... Murphy is a man who wants to “do good” and nearly ruins the series because it. Compounding the issue, Murphy’s voice-over commentary is excessive, occasionally states the obvious and at its worse, takes you out of the moment.

In addition to being a terrifically solid ten episodes, Narcos feels like the most of-its-moment show that any show has ever been--a distillation of the best, or at least the trendiest, aspects of contemporary television and film.

The omniscient-narrator device works very well for a complex story spanning many years and varied sets of players.

It’s built on sharp writing and equally sharp acting, as any good series needs to be.

The series begins to find its pacing not long after, and we see the strength of Moura’s acting, which to his credit never races, in the early going, toward over-the-top menace or the drug-lord cliches we're all used to at this point. Credit also the fact that Padilha brings a documentary feel to Narcos.

The sparely told project weaves together a taut, gripping narrative, in stark contrast with the flatness of its characters and color scheme. All told, this Gaumont production is the kind of binge-worthy TV addiction that Netflix was born to import.

The new Netflix drama is burdened with so much annoying voice-over narration, the series at times falls somewhere between an audiobook and one of the more grittier Investigation Discovery crime shows. This dramatization of the rise of Pablo Escobar into the most notorious and lethal drug kingpin of South America is nonetheless compelling, and the story moves briskly, making it a great bingeworthy treat.

There's a richer, more artistically ambitious version--possibly, but not necessarily, involving magic realism--of this story still waiting to be told, but the basic competence of Narcos is enough for now.

Virtually every performance is equal to the quality of the script, but Moura is especially compelling as he manipulates the seeming incongruities of Escobar’s character to heighten his aura of unpredictable menace.... Brancato does make one significant misstep by having the entire series heavily narrated by Murphy.

Show creators Chris Brancato, Carlo Bernard, and Doug Miro want to tell two parallel tales: The DEA investigation and hunt for Escobar, and Escobar’s point of view in his ever-increasing ambition, power, and ruthlessness. Narcos is superb at delineating the latter: You really get an understanding of how a poor, not especially charismatic man rose from the rabble to become one of the richest, most feared men in the world.... In contrast to this, the efforts of Murphy and Pena to defeat Escobar are, of necessity, more hit-or-miss.

It's a grand if inconsistent experiment that, from the moment it opens with a definition of magic realism, wears its considerable ambitions on its sleeve.

One of the strengths of Narcos is its refusal to paint anyone as purely good or bad.

An unlikeable character, no matter the circumstances, remains unlikeable, but an unlikeable character trumps a bland blonde man whose position of authority appears to be his only really interesting character trait, no matter how much voice-over he utters.