A husband rushes towards his neighbor's house, frantically knocks on their door, and says that some robbers killed his wife. But when Sergeant Lago (Tristán Ulloa) investigates the case, he finds obvious inconsistencies in the husband's narrative. If robbers entered through a window at the back of the house, why didn't they also exit through it? If the front door was locked, how did they find the correct key among a bunch of keys and run before the husband could enter the room and see them properly? Why isn't the bedsheet wrinkled if the husband got up in a hurry to help his wife? He says that after seeing the blood-soaked body, he held his wife in his arms and cried. Well, why is there no blood on the robe, then? The husband says that he put on the robe after hugging his wife. So he rushed to his room to fetch the robe before running to their neighbor's house in panic?
It's very clear that the husband, Aniceto (Miguel Borines), is lying. Murder in Galicia (aka El crimen de Pazos), then, is not so much about finding the real killer as about proving a suspect's guilt. And yet, the series doesn't exactly have that cat-and-mouse thrill. It's mostly about Lago chasing court orders and waiting for results from the forensics. What this means is that the series is less interested in the murder than in using that murder to expose the hollowness of the police department and the justice system—the very institutions that should be doing their jobs effectively. A judge (Verónica Sánchez) doesn't sign the orders that Lago needs to ensure the wife's safety. A forensic technician isn't able to conduct DNA tests on time because he is swarmed by other cases that also need to be completed within a deadline. Lago's boss rejects his request to station more officers outside the wife's hospital room for her safety because, apparently, they are short on manpower.
The ingredients are all there for an incandescent attack on the police and the judiciary, but Murder in Galicia undermines itself by narrowing its perspective. It merely shows how Lago is affected by the injustice without showing how his partners, who are equally involved in the case, respond to it. How does Barreiro (Fer Fraga), a rookie, deal with it? Does he undergo some disillusionment? Did he have certain ideas or expectations about the job that end up shattered? What about Turri (Carlos Blanco)? Is he as enraged as Lago? Does he feel like quitting? And even while dealing with Lago's distress, the show doesn't immerse itself in his world enough to show how the system's failure, which he takes personally, ends up affecting his life outside the case. How does his behavior change in front of his son and wife, and how do they deal with it? His son, especially, resents the family's move from Madrid because he had to leave his friends behind, which leads to him acting morose around Lago, who tries his best to connect with him. Does Lago's inner suffering, which must have resulted in some withdrawal, isolation, and stress, lead to any understanding or sympathy that might ease the strain between the son and his daddy?
All the series offers is Ulloa acting all exhausted and frustrated—it's only the external view that director Carlos Sedes seems concerned with. This surface-level handling reduces crucial matters to placard slogans like "The system is corrupt" or "The law is run by indifferent monkeys." We briefly see women holding banners and protesting on the streets against domestic violence at two different points in the series. Murder in Galicia is the cinematic equivalent of those protests: it talks about crimes against women, robberies, and systemic corruption through chants and taglines that state the obvious without much depth or complexity. This is "activism" in a digestible form, or a long investigative report reduced to a few "important" bullet points. When the series ends, you might not really feel the rage that Sedes wants you to feel. But, out of sympathy and goodwill, you may still feel like patting him on the back for at least saying the right things. You know the bar is very low when you have to praise something on the basis of brownie points. But this is what it is. Here is a slogan for you: These are sad times.
Final Score - [3.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times