3 out of 5

Created by: Ana Cohan, Miguel Cohan

The bookends of Atrapados – ‘Caught,’ for us watching this in English or translated – are pure Cobanverse: sensational, salacious, plot-holed, and twist-heavy. By now, I know to hold my breath through the starting point to see how a series really is, and also to not hold my breath going into the end, when nonsense re-rears its head for some Gotcha conclusion.

Indeed, inbetween its bookends, Atrapados approaches greatness, relative to these Coban adaptations. It handles its material pretty seriously and procedurally, and spreads out its moral relativism so characters are good shades of gray. It also starts to lightly touch on some more complex ideas, which it of course doesn’t get in to, but also doesn’t try to close the book on or conclude for us.

Ema Garay (Soledad Villamil) is a journalist who runs an expose beat, exposing criminals of various frauds / nefariousnesses in her ‘Atrapados’ series. She’s currently trying to track a likely groomer or predator through a social app, not assisted by the sheriff (Fernán Mirás), of whom Ema keeps demanding support, but without willingness to share her research. This is one of the show’s interesting – though mostly unexplored – undercurrents, juggling the impact of trying to do right but caught up in socializing that rightness, i.e. Ema needing to publish her efforts. The police are mostly depicted as competent in the show, and there are several events where we can assume things have gone worse because Ema didn’t want to properly involve them. At the same time, there’s also procedure that slows down key moments of her investigations; it’s admittedly not the focus of the show, but it’s points for and against it, treating the aspect with some weight while also not really doing much with it.

Garay elicits the help of a teen camp supervisor, Leo (Alberto Ammann), in spreading word of this social app-using predator, and their shared care for Saving The Children causes some lovemaking. But also – first episode spoilers – Leo is the predator, so, whoops.

…Or is he? Coban watchers (or viewers of crime / thriller miniseries like these) will know Leo is going to be outed, but will also likely not be surprised when the accusation starts to seem like a coverup of some type, and will probably also be able to pluck out which red herring suspect is less red than the others. However, this is where ‘Atrapados’ midgame gains ground again, because it doesn’t dive deep into the ins and outs of the happenings more than necessary, and instead focuses on Garay’s troubled relationship with her son (Matías Recalt), and how the victim of Leo / the predator, Martina (Carmela Rivero), navigated her life, as well as the impact Leo’s exposure has on his friend circle. There’s truly some fine work here from the younger actors, especially Recalt, and it’s refreshing how knowing Ana Cohan’s and
Miguel Cohan’s script is in dealing with teens, accepting the things they get up to and, in many ways, not judging them for it. Villamil helps this immensely, blending the coldness of her journalistic endeavors with her concerns as a parent, and also as a person, coming to grips with how her pursuits are affecting things.

Of course, there are problematic bits and pieces sprinkled in here. Directors Miguel and Hernan Goldfrid can’t quite figure out the “accepting” bit without also sexualizing Martina, and although it’s clear her sexuality is part of personality – that’s the accepting bit – there were probably still ways to depict this without tossing in the titillation bits. Along these lines, child endangerment is kind of the go-to Coban red alert crisis, which is not wrong, but is – of course – also its own form of sensationalism. I do think the 6-episode length is best for these shows, but, I dunno, we allow characters to just automatically see red once kids are involved as a shorthand way to justify extremes, and maybe extra runtime would leave room to smoothe that out?

I mean, I doubt it, because it’s Coban, which means the other annoyances are some go nowhere misleads, and a kind of amusing / annoying timelessness that occurs when adapting books from two or more decades ago to modern technology.

And while Atrapados ultimately can’t escape these Cobanverse flaws, and doesn’t have the room to leverage its stronger elements in its middle episodes, the fact that there are consistently stronger elements sets the show a cut above the streamable Coban pack.