Tonight on Netflix: a series that looked like Al Capone’s brilliant wit

Pablo Escobar is a name you know whether you know his story or not. Narcos is a series about his life and his criminal exploits that you’ve definitely heard of and you’re about to discover if you haven’t already.

While the show focuses on a Colombian drug lord, it also focuses on many other drug kingpins who plagued the country in the 1980s and 1990s. Told from the perspective of Steve Murphy (Boyd Holbrook), an American DEA agent working in Colombia, and his colleague Javier Peñales (Pedro Pascal), the first two seasons will follow Escobar (Wagner Moura) at the head of the cartel. Medellin because he dominates the cocaine market, which has made him extremely wealthy. The third season deals with the aftermath, what happened when he went down, and moves on to a new threat: the rise of the infamous Cali Cartel, which the DEA will also try to stop.

Created and produced by Carlo Bernardi, Chris Brancato and Doug Miro in 2015, the series took the television world by storm and quickly hooked viewers, mesmerized by the loathsome yet seductive world of the almighty baron. But if narcosis It fascinates me because it’s a real window into the past that you just have to open to find yourself immersed in the dual reality of the man who was called the “King of Cocaine.”

With its bilingual, rhythmic and relevant script, narcosis (abbreviation “narcotraficantes”) revolves around the theme of duality: from the two camps represented by Escobar, a hero to some, a villain to most – Al Capone would have done better – the cartels before the government and. Of the two spoken languages, Spanish and English. This dual nationality, in addition to being an American/French production between Netflix and Gaumont International Television, is what allowed the program to be exported and beyond the boundaries of streaming that blessed it.

While the series has gained international acclaim, particularly for its realism, it’s no surprise that its spin-off, Narcos: Mexico (2018), which follows the rise of the Guadalajara cartel and its leader Felix Gallardo (Diego Luna), has also been. Recognized for its quality.

And to tell you his true story, narcosis He chose authenticity in all its aspects, be it the location of his shoot – Colombia -, the natural environment sublimated by his excellent photography, or the faithful costumes and landscapes, the clothes worn by Escobar and his entourage in the buildings that surround them.

For this we can thank the man himself, because thanks to the many videos he took himself – the one who liked to document his life – the production of the show was able to recreate his world down to the last detail. . This valuable visual documentation is supplemented with actual archival images of key events embedded in the narrative to bring us as close to our reality as possible. I warn you, you will believe it.