Queen of the South (2016)

Watchseries; Warning, you can't just watch one show, you will continue watching more and more. The show is absolutely brilliant.

Warning, you can't just watch one show, you will continue watching more and more. The show is absolutely brilliant.

Queen of the South watchseries. The lead female characters of the series are definitely embodying Pallas Athene archetypes, that is interesting for Mexican culture, as I understand the women are still behind in the social roles they can aspire to there. In this series Alice Braga, (Brazilian not Mexican) and actual niece of Sonia Braga is given low level crud errands and kept hostage in the cartel of the Number one drug lord in Mexico, only it is his wife's division of the cartel. His wife wants to go solo and run the drug empire her way or the highway and severe rivalry develops with this husband and wife. I guess the series illustrates the severity of the narco drug trafficking culture, shades of Breaking Bad maybe, but coming from the Mexican angle of things. Worth watching, Alice Braga does a good job, characters not bad, and plot keeps you interested to where this will all lead.

Highly entertaining and worthy of your time. Can't wait for season 5!

Alice Braga brings the right mix of grit/grace to the role, but the supporting cast have holes. Not action dominated, acceptable level of production (too sloppy for a movie but OK for TV), mediocre camera angles, solid lighting. As others have said, if you enjoy gritty drug dramas it does the job.

However, the dialogues are predictable and often repetitive, obvious plot holes drag this drama down. The writing makes this feel like a Latin day time drama put in the body of a gritty crime movie.

TLDR; average TV drama with incoherent plot/writing, that Alice Braga is working hard to carry.

I greatly enjoyed the original story, the book La Reina del Sur by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. I listened to the English translation on audiobook and was drawn in to Teresa's story.

The telenovela, starring the amazing Kate del Castillo, was a wild and intense ride. It greatly expanded the 'world' of Teresa and we got to spend more time actually with her and seeing her experiences rather than in the book where it was mostly told from outsider POV.

What I like about this new show is that it seems to be walking a nice line between the more serious and down to Earth aspects of the novel while injecting the adrenaline pounding flash as well as first person focus on Teresa that the telenovela did.

The changes are enough that you kind of know what's going to come next, but not really so you are still tense with anticipation and worry.

The writing, acting and directing really feel on point and I'm super excited to see where the next 12 (and hopefully more) episodes go.

I found "Queen of the South" (2016) to be very similar to "La Reina del Sur" (2011) with both portraying Teresa Mendoza's life story surrounded by corrupted cops, politicians, drug traffickers and dealers wrestling for power and control of Colombia's cocaine import business to Mexico and the United States but the story line and events ave very different. I enjoyed them both very much but am partial to the earlier version which is more colorful and authentic in my opinion even though it is in Spanish with subtitles. Both are currently available on Netflix.