A new thriller from Spain is pretty much a story about trust; a woman in an abusive marriage has to trust a person she really shouldn’t in order to get her out of that marriage. Will her choice to align herself with this new person be more dangerous than the marriage itself?
Opening Shot: On a fishing boat, a mother distractedly reads as her daughters enjoy a day of fishing with their stepfather.
The Gist: Ángela (Verónica Sánchez) looks like she’s living a great life: She lives in a huge modern house in Mungia, a Spanish shore town. Her husband Gonzalo (Daniel Grao) is a well-regarded architect and is a good stepdad to her young daughters.
But all is not what it seems. Gonzalo is controlling and abusive, and his anger has only increased since Ángela reported him — whether it’s to law enforcement for the abuse or for something related to business, we don’t know yet. When two friends insist that Ángela, who helped design her own house, work on theirs, Ángela already knows that Gonzalo won’t be happy with that. In fact, when he insists on talking about it, he slams her up against a window and chokes her.
While Gonzalo is on a business trip to Madrid, he sends Ángela gets some flowers. The delivery guy, Edu (Jaime Zatarain), says he recognizes her from high school, when she was called “Angie.” He takes advantage of having her phone number from the order and starts to text her. She’s more charmed than annoyed, and they eventually meet up.
She enjoys the attention, and when they have a drink at a house he takes care of while the owners are away, he notices the makeup on her neck that covers the marks from when Gonzalo choked her. He thinks she needs to get away from her abusive husband, but she has loyalty to him for what he provided her and her daughters after they got together.
But Ángela and Edu continue to hang out together, until one day when they’re at the beach, and Edu kisses her. She rushes back home when Gonzalo returns from his trip, and decides she needs to cut things off with Edu. But Edu finds her on a jog the next morning and gives her some shocking new information.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Ángela, which is based on the 2021 British series Angela Black, has similar vibes to Fatal Attraction.
Our Take: Ángela is a pulpy thriller where a woman has to figure out if the way out of her abusive marriage is as dangerous as staying with her husband. That’s pretty much what’s set up by the first episode, which springs a hell of a surprise on both Ángela and viewers with its final scene. Spoilers follow.
The idea that Edu isn’t an old friend from high school but a hitman hired by Gonzalo to kill her — who then subsequently falls for her — seems farfetched. We don’t know if Edu is saying this in order to stay in Ángela’s life or if he’s telling the truth. Either way, this piece of news is guaranteed to make Ángela not know who to trust.
It has the potential to make for a confusing narrative, but given how refreshingly uncomplicated the first episode was, we suspect that things will remain that way. Ángela probably can’t trust Edu completely, but she may not have another choice if she really wants a path out of her abusive marriage.
We need to know more about Ángela and Gonzalo’s marriage, and why she reported him to whomever she reported him to, in order to get more context to why she stayed around when he was being obviously abusive. But in the context of a six-part thriller, that context may not matter much. She and Edu will likely work together to get her out, and the show may not delve further than that.
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Ángela comes back from the jog where Edu gave her the news about Gonzalo; she starts to go up a flight of stairs, sees Gonzalo at the top, and turns around.
Sleeper Star: Any of the cast members beyond the main three are pretty inconsequential, especially in the first episode.
Most Pilot-y Line: We wonder how desperate Ángela was to get attention from another man, given how stalkery Edu’s initial spate of attention seemed.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Ángela is an overly dramatic thriller that tries to build tension where there is none. But it’s got a straightforward story and good acting, so we hope it builds to a pulse-pounding conclusion.
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.