White Lines, is the brand new Netflix series from Money Heist creator Álex Pina.
When the mummified body of her brother is discovered twenty years after his disappearance from Ibiza, Zoe Walker goes to the Spanish party island to find out who murdered him. A sheltered Mancunian, with a history of mental illness, she isn’t quite ready for the insanity that awaits her. Sex, drugs, and dance music are just the beginning of a journey that will lead her down a path of self-discovery and self-destruction.
Umapagan Ampikaipakan: First things first. This is nothing like Money Heist. That series is a frenetically paced and tightly plotted page turner, while White Lines is more of a sauntery soap opera.
Bahir Yeusuff: Going into this with Money Heist expectations had me set-up for something different. I know it wasn’t going to be another Money Heist, but I sure wasn’t expecting an ensemble drama. Think of it like Friends, but instead of the laughs, it’s just fights, and drugs, and arguments, and sex, and nudity.
UA: So you mean Melrose Place. But in Ibiza.
BY: Pretty much.
UA: Also, as you well know, it’s a rule that there can only ever be one TV show set in Ibiza at any one time. And since Netflix cancelled Idris Elba’s Turn Up Charlie after just one season, they decided to give us something in which every episode starts with just that kind of warning: Sex. Nudity. Substances. Language. Smoking. They did, however, forget to warn us about “Dance Music” and “Highly Saturated Scenery”.
BY: (Oh God, why did you have to bring up Turn Up Charlie.) So what did you think? Does White Lines live up to its pre-launch hype of being “the show of this summer”?
UA: I wasn’t quite sure what to expect going into this. The trailer made it look like a whodunnit on an island paradise. Which is a little misleading. Watching this, you quickly realise that the mystery at the heart of the show – “Who killed Axel Collins?” – is secondary to everything else that’s going on. A fact Álex Pina makes very clear in the first episode when he points out that the Spanish statute of limitations on murder had expired. It’s a clever way to undermine the show’s initial tease and open it up to being a soapy drama as opposed to a mystery thriller.
BY: It’s when Zoe Walker, the deceased’s younger sister, starts meeting up with her brother’s friends, that you quickly catch on to all of the drama that’s going on behind the scenes. You begin to get the impression that maybe the island isn’t that perfect. White Lines cast of characters are all perfectly tuned for their roles.
UA: Not perfect? Everyone here is an asshole in some way or other. If there’s one thing we can expect from Pina, it’s that he knows how to write a great asshole. This is one of those TV shows in which everyone has secrets and everyone is lying to protect someone, or gain something. Marcus (Axel’s best friend) is lying for love. Oriol (the heir to Ibiza’s most powerful family) is trying to win his father’s respect. And Zoe is trying to be the perfect wife, mother, daughter, and sister.
BY: And they all fail. I’ll be honest, so much of White Lines just washed over me. There was almost too much going on. The show was emotionally frenetic. Where things just kept happening and the story just kept going. From Zoe trying to find out what happened with her brother, to Oriol’s family dramas (which could have been a whole other show in itself), to Anna’s twisted love triangle, to Marcus’ drug drama – not forgetting the Axel flashbacks themselves. I think it might have needed to be pared down a bit.
UA: I too would have preferred something a little more focussed. Because the problem with all of these individual threads (some being more interesting than others) is that they don’t quite coalesce in a unique or surprising way by the time these 10 episodes are done. You may not have figured out who killed Axel, but you pretty much know how everything else is going to play out. A whodunnit has always been a trope used to dive into the secrets and lies of everyone involved. And whether it’s Murder on the Orient Express or Knives Out, the sordid lives of the characters are purposely written to be more interesting that the crime itself. It’s how you keep an audience invested. Here, I stopped caring about Axel’s murder about half way in. (Which is why Knives Out was such a great subversion of the genre. By showing you exactly how the crime occurred at the beginning of the movie, what kept us guessing were the other dramas and complications in the movie.)
BY: But as salacious as some of the other problems may have been, I’m kind of here for Axel’s story. Because that story, although not new, was quite interesting. For the first time in a long time, I was probably more invested in the flashbacks than I was the main thread. After the first two or three episodes, I started caring less about some of the side quests and wanted to get back to the whodunnit. God knows all of those flashbacks looked like they could make for an interesting series on its own. I also loved Boxer (Nuno Lopes) as a character. Given how Zoe is constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown, it was nice to have a foil who would either take control of a situation, or be able to calm her down.
UA: Okay, so I’m not the only one who wants to see a Magnum P.I.-esque series with Boxer as the lead. Running oddjobs. Solving crimes. Taking out drug runners.
BY: I’m totally on board for that. Also it needs to be set in southern Spain. Sun kissed beaches and little siesta towns. (Call us Álex. We’ve got your Season 2 sorted.)
UA: The one thing I did enjoy about White Lines is how seamlessly multilingual it is. Everyone speaks the language that they speak. Subtitles show up when necessary. All of it feels incredibly natural. If anything, it helps get you quickly situated in the world of the show. Which is something we’re seeing a lot more of on Netflix. Being a global platform, they are less fearful of having to worry about an American audience tuning out because they’re afraid to read.
BY: It’s a very European experience. The Eddy does it to. And if you’re only half paying attention (and I don’t know how you can do that with subtitles on screen) you can quite easily miss when the spoken language has switched. I have to say that it’s something that feels very natural to us as Malaysians because we live in a multilingual world. I have a question for you. Was White Lines a one-off? Because at the end of the series, I had two thoughts: 1. I don’t feel like I got closure, and 2. Where would they go if there was a Season 2?
UA: It felt like a one and done to me. But given how much of a slog it was, I don’t think I want a Season 2. We got most of our questions answered. Yes, there were some character arcs and threads left hanging, but I’m not sure I cared enough by the end of it to want to know more.
BY: I really don’t. The series solves the big mystery and that was good enough for me. Would it have been better if the series was a couple episodes shorter? Possibly. But it sure doesn’t need a follow-up.
UA: The biggest let down here is how a show with this much sun, skin, and sex wasn’t at all fun. Except maybe for that bit in the first episode when a cute little dog sniffs cocaine.
BY: And when Boxer rides out on a jet ski to meet some friends on a boat. That was probably about as fun as it got.
UA: A shout out to Juan Diego Botto who plays Oriol. His is probably the most layered character in the whole series and we got a truly gripping performance from him.
BY: My standout performance was probably Tom Rhys Harries as Axel Collins himself. The moments of warmth when he’s with young Zoe in the flashbacks. The fighting for his right to party speech in the courtroom. He didn’t overplay the whole “angry young man from the 90s”. It wasn’t a cliché. I thought he was electric every time he was on screen. Which is appropriate because Alex Collins was supposed to be electric too.
UA: This is a weird one. When we talk about peak TV, I don’t think White Lines will make anyone’s top 50 list. It’s a tough recommendation to make when there’s so much genuinely great stuff out there. And I say this despite this show’s truly great performances. I guess, maybe if you’re done with Money Heist, and Into the Night, and Upload, and The Eddy. Then again, this is 10 hours spent not watching The Wrong Missy. So there is that.
White Lines
Netflix, Season 1, 10 episodes
Creator: Álex Pina
Directors: Nick Hamm, Luis Prieto, and Ashley Way
Writer: Álex Pina
Cast: Laura Haddock, Marta Milans, Juan Diego Botto, Nuno Lopes, Daniel Mays, Laurence Fox, Tom Rhys Harries, Pedro Casablanc, and Angela Griffin
Follow Us