4 out of 5

Created by: José Manuel Lorenzo

Of the “secrets from the past destroy a small town” Broadchurch framework, Spanish drama Las Largas Sombras – which apparently more directly translates to ‘The Long Shadows;’ a much better title than the incredibly generic ‘Past Lies’ to which Hulu / Disney translated it – is a female-centric, 6-episode tale that is incredibly successful with its deep-cut character moments, but struggles to exactly glue that to its mystery. This is common for a lot of ‘Broadchurches,’ but Past Lies is a cut above in the way which I just praised it: the stories told concerning its main leads are incredibly layered, and so smartly weave their layers from past to present in a way that allows / encourages its very skilled cast to make the lives of their roles very, very real, and weighty. In this sense, the inciting secret that causes inevitable unravelings is thematically on point as well, as it’s treated more as just another bump in a long road of any given person’s development – roads that are paved for everyone involved, whether directly involved or not. And in a non-TV world where we didn’t need big reveals, Past Lies’ writers could’ve left things there, and we would’ve had a really affecting series. But, y’know, it is TV, and you need a beginning, middle, and end, and you need your twists and turns, and so red herrings and information-obscuring flashbacks and hasty decisions are used, leading to some pointless asides, wheel spinning, and wayward storytelling. Those are, truly, kept at a minimum, and at a distance as well: it’s clear the focus was intended to be these women’s lives, and really only up until the last episode needing to put the pieces together, these TV-trope flaws are very easy to ignore.

Filmmaker Rita (Elena Anaya) is back in her hometown of Elda to pack up and sell her recently deceased mother’s home. This is a trip clearly troubled by undesirable past memories, but her overly social girlfriend Angela (Nansi Nsue) encourages her out and about, which turns into an invite to socialize with her old pack of friends, all still in town – doctor Teresa (Belén Cuesta), politician Sole (Marta Etura), social worker Lena (Lorena López), real estate agent Carmen (Ana Rayo), and lawyer Candela (Itziar Atienza). Angela finds some old camcorder recordings of a school trip to Mallorca when the girls were all teens, and takes it upon herself to digitize them and “surprise” Rita by playing them at a gettogether that evening.

Meanwhile, Elda cop Paula (Irene Escolar) hears about the discovery of a body in Mallorca, and goes to find out more details, fearing / hoping it will be that of her sister, Mati, who went missing – we later find out – on that same school trip, apparently having departed with a boy, a story which Paula never quite believed. The body is confirmed to be Mati, and also eventually ruled a suicide. Still, it’s enough for Paula to stage an investigation.

…Leading to her knocking on the door of the video-viewing gettogether, coincidentally as Mati appears on screen.

Something (or things) did happen on that class trip, of course, and through Past Lives’ six episodes, Paula investigates and accuses, the ladies have various flashbacks, and video clips are shown out of context, all to fill us in on those things. And in a more typical version of one of these types of shows, Paula acts illogically, the flashbacks show improbable things, and the videos purposefully obscure what anyone watching them linearly would see, all to delay some rather unbelievable twist. As mentioned, there is some gimmickry here, but it’s less offensive because it all thematically works, and there’s a sense that we might’ve just been including stuff to nod to the book on which this was based (by Elia Barceló), or there wasn’t enough time to properly balance some storylines – unfortunately evident in how some very heavy material doesn’t necessarily get the full screentime it needs, though when it’s there, it’s effectively and maturely handled.

Instead, the show actually relies mostly on the modern day to color the past, by showing us who these women are, and how they are, which gives us the context for the past. The flashback are then mostly used as flavoring to that instead of cheap reveals. Paula’s investigation is only accusatory out of her anger over her sister’s possible mistreatment – it is otherwise very logical, and surprisingly procedural. She does the work; she takes her time with it. There’s no profiler magic or super detective skills: ask questions, sit on the answers, ask again, go through all the documents…

The most hand-waivey element of all of this is its confluence: things happen to shake out all around the same time, but that’s acceptable for TV. Otherwise, any time I was expecting (because of tropes) the show to go shallow, it took a longer game; any time I was expecting a character to be simplified, it went more complex – except maybe in once instance, but I file that into the “we just didn’t have the time” feeling above.

Past Lies may be an overly simplified title, but the content feels like it maintains (or adds to) the depths one could find in a dense, character-rich novel.