There is so much to like in That Night/Esa Noche that what's missing from the show becomes all the more disappointing. The six 40–45-minute episodes are engineered for a swift pace—they drive the story forward with brisk momentum. The result is something less felt and more bingeable. Still, whatever the series does manage to evoke turns out to be surprising and admirable. Consider the scene where Cris (Paula Usero) tells her sisters, Paula (Claudia Salas) and Elena (Clara Galle), that she has decided to stay in the Dominican Republic and open a dog clinic/shelter. The sisters, along with Paula's partner, Luisa (Nüll García), came to the Dominican Republic on vacation, but now, at the airport, just as they are about to board a flight home, Cris drops this unexpected bomb. That Night, based on Gillian McAllister's novel of the same name, also delivers "unexpected bombs."
What begins as a phone call from Elena asking Cris and Paula for their help soon sends the story in unpredictable directions. Those directions come with tonal swings that hurl the series from quirky comedy into drama. A familiar pattern pops into your mind when you see the sisters bickering while disposing of a dead body. You expect That Night to follow the template of a comedy-thriller like Bad Sisters, which is also about sisters burying a body and saving themselves from the police. Cris, Paula, and Elena do have enough quirks and familial troubles for a black comedy. That Night, however, takes you by surprise with its narrative shifts. It goes where you don't expect it to, though in hindsight, when you consider all those lines about law and religion, the choices begin to make sense. They seem guided by their own logic.
I am being vague because there are spoilers I have to avoid. But even without that constraint, I would still have been somewhat cryptic, because That Night's twists deserve to be experienced unspoiled and firsthand. The episode that unfolds through the perspective of Javier (Pedro Casablanc), the father of the sisters, has emotional heft. It's here that you find a man clinging tightly to his imperfect family and his imperfect notions. "We have to get back to being a tight-knit family," he implores when his daughters start having mental breakdowns inside a cabin in a forest. Whatever Javier's flaws, he loves the people he cares for with all his strength (this is the kind of familial devotion that Paula, the elder daughter, has inherited, which is why she prioritizes her sisters over her partner). Javier is ready to become a fugitive if it means preventing his children from going to prison. And as he believes in Jesus, he proves himself to be a devout Christian. But what does he go through internally when the other Catholics abandon him during the moment he most needs them?
One of the major issues with That Night is that it never goes inside the headspace of its characters. How does the family deal with news and online videos that mock them? How do they handle each other and themselves during the media circus? One of the sisters mentions a podcast on which Javier appears to save their image, but they all deal with it so casually, as if they were accustomed to such online hate (they are not celebrities; they are just doctors). Elena is the one who has a baby—a result of a one-night stand. Did Elena ever contemplate abortion? Did she immediately accept her role as a mother? What did Javier, the diehard Christian, initially say about this situation? Furthermore, what was prison like for a certain character? How did it change them? How did another character grow up with the knowledge that someone close to them is in a cell (I am being deliberately vague here)?
That Night, by concentrating on the externals, leaves its characters looking like chess pieces. This is why it gets its strength from its depiction of interesting ideas, like how children are shaped by traumatic incidents and how online mobs chase trendy cases without full information. What about the legal justice system? It runs longer than the online mobs, and it deals with truth, statements, and evidence. Judges don't salivate at "trendy cases." If these ideas had been fleshed out and channeled through richer characters, That Night's pleasures wouldn't have just existed on the surface. The series would have left you stunned; it would have been something truly significant.
Final Score- [5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times