Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Gangs Of Galicia’ On Netflix, Where A Madrid Lawyer Moves To Galicia To Look Into Her Father’s Secret Life In A Crime Family

There are some shows you just know would be better served with a much smaller cast than it has. Too many generic characters and too many generic storylines distract from the parts of the story that are actually interesting. That’s what we see with a new Spanish series on Netflix.

GANGS OF GALICIA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “MADRID.” A young lawyer gets a call from her father as she walks through the courthouse building.

The Gist: Ana Gonzalez Soriano (Clara Lago) is close to her father, who operates a boat that caters to tourists, and he wonders when she’ll come to visit. But she’s so slammed with cases that she’s not sure. After they get off the phone, what looks like an American couple board the boat for a tour. What ends up happening is that Ana’s father is shot to death in the boat’s living quarters.

Three months later, when Ana and her mother hear Ana’s father’s will, they find out an account they’ve never heard of is being left two two women in a town in Galicia called Cambados. Neither of the names ring a bell to them.

What they learn is that Ana’s father was in witness protection after testifying against the Padín family, who are one of the biggest drug-trafficking organizations in the region. The fact that her father spent her entire life lying to her doesn’t sit well with Ana, and without telling her mother she quits her job at a top Madrid law firm and moves to Cambados, setting up shop there as an attorney.

In the meantime, Daniel (Tomar Novas) has become the face of the Padín organization with his father (Miguel de Lira) in prison, though his father still runs a lot of things from the inside, and also is able to get to Cambados during his work release periods, via assistance from some law enforcement who is in his pocket. A big delivery is waylaid when Daniel finds out that the national police are observing their activity; they anchor the shipment offshore when the boat carrying it runs out of gas, and Daniel and his associates distract customs officers with a speedboat chase.

In court for a traffic violation, Daniel sees Ana outside a courtroom and recruits her to be a public defender for him on the case. Given the fact that she’s new in town, he figures she won’t be in the pocket of anyone. She helps him keep her license, and he invites her to dinner, which she turns down.

Ana knows exactly who Daniel is, due to her research about her father’s former life. She also is interested in getting to know Berta Figeraedo (María Pujalte) and Laura Silva (Melania Cruz), who were the two women named in the will; they own a restaurant and bar in town.

Of course, everything in that town is intertwined, and Daniel wants to get Ana on his side, all the while making sure that off-shored shipment reaches his father’s customers, despite those customers’ doubts. All the while, Naranjo (Francesc Garrido), the head of the national police task force, is watching his every move.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Gangs Of Galicia (original title: Clanes), created by Jorge Guerricaechevarría (30 Coins), is more or less a Spanish Narcos, but perhaps with a bit more of a personal angle to it.

Our Take: Guerricaechevarría gets really ambitious with the scope of Gangs Of Galicia in the first episode. It starts with an intriguing story, with Ana trying to figure out just what her father was running from when he went into witness protection. She basically dumps her entire life without telling anyone to move to Cambados, and then starts to get to know Daniel, whom she’ll get deeply involved with, especially emotionally, all the while trying working to bring his family down.

That feels like plenty of plot for one series, doesn’t it? But there are long stretches of the first episode where we don’t see Lago, who plays Ana; instead we see what seems like pretty standard-grade crime family plot turns. There’s a shipment, and the son of the crime boss wants to prove he can run the family in his father’s absence. Daniel even has a godson whom he encourages to keep studying and stay legitimate, despite the kid’s insistence that he wants to work and make some coin in the organization. Of course, we’re pretty sure the kid will be in grave danger at one point or another.

The cast is sprawling, but a lot of the characters aside from Ana and Daniel are more or less generic crime family characters. Where the show’s drama is going to be its most riveting is in the dynamic between its two starts, including the sexual tension and attraction Ana and Daniel have with each other. The rest of it feels overly generic and serves as a distraction to what could be a taut story about a woman digging into her father’s past and the conflicting morals and emotions she feels as she pursues Daniel on multiple levels.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode, but we get the feeling there will be some during the first season.

Parting Shot: After the shipment is successfully brought ashore, Daniel, more confident in his position in the organization, joins Ana on her daily run.

Sleeper Star: Melania Cruz as Laura, who seems to be the only one in Cambados who wants to fight the Padín organization. And we’ll be interested in seeing how she interacts with Ana as Ana keeps digging into her father’s past.

Most Pilot-y Line: Is anyone looking after the Padín patriarch in the parking garage where he does his work release? He seems to be able to come and go at will and take phone calls from whomever he wants.

Our Call: STREAM IT. What we hope is that Gangs Of Galicia concentrates on the aspect of its story that’s the most interesting, which is Ana and Daniel. The more the show goes away from them, the less interesting it is.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.