‘Rotten Legacy’ (2025) Netflix Series Review - All Bark and No Bite

After trying to replicate the success of Yellowstone with Ransom Canyon and Territory (and failing terribly), Netflix once again hops on its age-old trend of getting "inspired" by another hit prestige TV. This time, it goes after Succession with Legado/Rotten Legacy. Is there any other Succession-inspired Netflix series? Nothing comes to my mind. Anyway, this new show - created by Carlos Montero, Breixo Corral, and Pablo Alén - suffers from the same problem that can be found in other copycats on Netflix: They are so busy imitating their "inspirations" that they become formulaic. Even the editing in Rotten Legacy reminds you of Succession. The scenes are tight and dialogue-heavy. We move energetically from one moment to another moment. There is no breathing space between the scenes - everything is thrown towards us relentlessly. In Succession, such an execution yielded tension, humor, and lots of thrills. Rotten Legacy, on the other hand, generates a flat pitch; you feel absolutely nothing. There is no pleasure in the twisty game of newspaper business that the characters indulge in. There is no excitement, no sense of something genuinely at risk. The stakes are verbally pointed out, but never felt by the audience. The main culprit is the lack of fervor and creatiy in the filming of dialogue scenes. Directors Eduardo Chapero-Jackson and Carlota Pereda simply record the actors as they deliver their lines. These lines merely advance the plot, so you listen carefully only to keep up with the narrative. Both Chapero-Jackson and Pereda don't have a good ear for dialogue, which is why they use actors like mouthpieces who just dispense whatever the screenwriter has written in the script. There is no drama in the words; the dialogues don't sound like music.

The actors themselves are fine, but it's evident that the creators are attempting to bring, say, Kendall Roy's personality through Diego Martín's Andrés Seligman and Logan Roy through Jose Coronado's Federico Seligman. The more you get to know the Roy family, the more you can decide which member to root for and which one to dislike. Moreover, a terrific cast, including names like Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin, brought sensuality and comic vigor, respectively, to the screen. The thespians in Rotten Legacy are surely charming. Belén Cuesta, as Yolanda, can be a clumsy, funny buffoon, and Natalia Huarte, as an ambitious politician Guadalupe, can look like a sly snake. This cast, though, is made to wear the skin of hollow characters who come across as puppets. And since all they do is (dramatically) utter what they have been fed by the script, what we get is images of actors acting. Succession was such a hit because it gave us memorable scenes like when Kendall, stuck in traffic, runs towards the office to get to a board meeting or when Roman and Shiv slap each other and start fighting like kids (Tom enters the room, sees them, and immediately exits). Succession knew how to stage scenes. Rotten Legacy tries to spice things up with sex, humor, and multiple twists. Yolanda is in an open relationship and starts seeing a young guy who also happens to be dating her sister (Maria Morera). But as far as sexual matters are concerned, almost every character is quite open. Yolanda is also the primary source of most jokes in the series. She gets involved in and gives rise to all sorts of silly things. Then, there are secret deals and double crossings that change the direction of the story. None of these elements (and events), however, truly excite your senses. The scenes are unadorned, literal, and weak. Watching them feels like a chore; the reward is that you understand what's happening currently on the screen.

One can admire Rotten Legacy's decision to have its characters communicate with one another constantly. Things that one character could have concealed from another in a lesser series for so-called dramatic purposes are revealed almost instantly. Two sisters talk about the boy they both have slept with. A wife tells her husband that she has been seeing someone else secretly. Yet, Rotten Legacy fails to rise above those "lesser series." It's all bark and no bite. Yolanda's husband, Ricardo (Gustavo Salmerón), is a filmmaker, but what movies has he made and what kinds of movies does he prefer watching? How many actors has he worked with? Does he have a favorite actor, director, or film? During a Q&A session, we gain no insight into a movie named Abyss. Does it belong to the horror genre? When was it released? Yolanda herself runs a TV channel that, according to Federico, serves trash to the audience, but what trash exactly? What shows and films has she produced? If both the husband and the wife are cinephiles, why don't we ever see them talking about movies? And how does Federico know what art is and what trash is? He doesn't come across as the kind of individual who spends time in the theaters or in the company of DVDs or streaming services. Then again, we never get a grip on his life as an editor? Did he win any awards? What stories did he publish? When you try to dig deeper into the characters, you find nothing but emptiness. They resemble cardboard cutouts - they don't have an inner life. Also, a thread involving an investigation into the death of a journalist becomes stupid due to unnecessary twists. Ultimately, it's not just the legacy that's rotten; the decay originates from the writing.

Final Score- [3.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times