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The Spanish series \u201cWhen No One Sees Us,\u201d beginning Friday on Max, is one of the better foreign-crime dramas in ages \u2014 focused, beautiful, sturdy but artful. The show is set in a small town in Spain where there is a U.S. Air Force base, and the story unfolds during Holy Week, which adds to the sense of import and impending crisis.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo One\u201d (in Spanish and English, with subtitles) is the tale of two cops and two investigations, one local and one foreign. Luc\u00eda (Maribel Verd\u00fa) is the Spanish cop with a testy teenage daughter, a deteriorating mother-in-law and a phone that never stops ringing. She\u2019s looking into a startling ritualistic suicide and an emerging drug ring. Adding to her to-do list is Magaly (Mariela Garriga), a high-ranking investigator for the U.S. military, brought in to find a missing airman who might be part of an intelligence breach.<\/p>\n
Like many fancy contemporary crime shows, some of the action here, including the denouement, unfolds during distinctive local festivals \u2014 in this case Nazarene processions, in which some celebrants don tall, pointy hoods while others carry a massive wooden float bedecked with candles and religious statutes. The show is brimming with Catholic imagery, and characters have ecstatic religious experiences, both sober and drug-induced. \u201cLet\u2019s go do some penance,\u201d one guy sighs as he heads out to see his in-laws.<\/p>\n
The show is gorgeous to behold, bright and sunny and rich in detail; people\u2019s cars, their gaits, the way they smooth their hair down when taking off a hat, those things all add up. \u201cNo One\u201d is also full of life and humor. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Plenty of shows have Type A female characters whose quirk is an obsession with junk food, but here that is taken to a realer and more painful place as a straight-up eating disorder. Small characters are sketched with fascinating specificity and affection, so much so that one wants to prolong the mystery just to spend more time with everyone.<\/p>\n
There are eight episodes, satisfying and engrossing \u2014 and without that hot-boxed misery and gloom that so many crime dramas confuse for substance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n