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Gather \u2019round, old friends, for it is time to recall the big, terrible event of that night long ago \u2014 that night when we swore a solemn oath to bury this secret, and yet now, somehow, perhaps 20 full years later, the horror of it still affects us all! Why must every group have a prodigal troublemaker whose return dredges up these old memories? Can we not leave the past in the past? Maybe our recollections differ \u2014 we can confront this in flashback, or maybe just in the pounding rain. The first person who cries and says \u201cBut she was our friend!\u201d loses.<\/p>\n
\u201cPast Lies,\u201d a six-part Spanish drama on Hulu (dubbed<\/a> or in Spanish, with subtitles<\/a>; its original title is \u201cLas Largas Sombras”), is the latest swirly mystery about a group of now-grown women haunted by their teenage pasts. \u201cLies,\u201d though, is more frank than much of its brethren, more streamlined and grounded.<\/p>\n Rita (Elena Anaya) is a well-known film director who reluctantly returns to her hometown, Alicante, Spain, to settle her mother\u2019s estate. Despite initial dodges and awkwardness, she winds up folded back into her high school clique, starting with a brittle dinner party. The different kinds of hugs Rita exchanges with each of these former friends is one of the juiciest, most detailed scenes I\u2019ve seen in ages \u2014 decades of longing and disappointment depicted in the twist of one shoulder blade.<\/p>\n The reunion becomes even more strained when the police identify the remains of Mati, a classmate who vanished during a senior trip to Mallorca. Mati\u2019s younger sister, Paula (Irene Escolar), is one of the investigators, though it\u2019s hard to imagine how she finds time for police work when she is so busy scowling and chewing gum. Paula is convinced these women know more than they\u2019re telling her, and she\u2019ll comb through home videos the girls shot as teens to prove it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Part of what makes \u201cPast Lies\u201d intriguing, beyond its appealing chicness and gorgeous setting, is that the central mystery is not one agreed-upon lie. The women each have different suspicions, different secrets they wanted to keep back in the day or maintain now. The show is a saga not about simmering teenage blood lust or the freaky, warped horrors of girldom, but rather about the natural contours of regrets, the bittersweetness of regarding one\u2019s youthful passions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n