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A seminal work of magical realism, published in 1967, One Hundred Years of Solitude was long protected from adaptation by the wishes of its author, Gabriel García Márquez. The patriarch of Latin American literature died in 2014, and his heirs bowed to Netflix's arguments, on condition that the series be performed in Castilian Spanish by Colombian actors.

The first eight hours (we expect as many in a few months' time) of the One Hundred Years of Solitude series justify García Márquez's reservations and the flexibility of his descendants.

The episodic form at least makes it possible to tackle the main obstacle announced by the novel's title: the difficulty of portraying the passage of time and its effect on people and things. García Márquez had imagined the effects on a microcosm of his creation, the village of Macondo, founded by José Arcadio Buendia (Marco Antonio Gonzalez Ospina, then Diego Vasquez), an impulsive young man who left his native land to live out his love for Ursula Iguaran (Susana Morales Caña, then Marleyda Soto), far from prejudice.

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