42 days of darkness
Here’s somewhere you don’t often see on TV: the affluent, beautiful, dismal Los Lagos region of southern Chile. It’s where Netflix’s 42 Days of Darkness is set. I enjoy cloudy weather, or I believed I did; I once thought it’d be nice to live in Puerto Montt. But natural beauty never looked so dreary as in this show.
More precisely, the setting is Puerto Varas, on Lago Llanquihue. A housewife disappears from a gated community. Has she been kidnapped, as her husband claims? Has she been murdered? Has she simply abandoned her family? The police investigate at a snail’s pace. Brisker progress is made by a hustling lawyer and his associates, who are moved as much by the compulsion to snoop as by the prospect of helping the family (and receiving payment). The story is modeled after a true one – I don’t know how closely. Stories of missing persons are the most wrenching to watch. I dread putting each episode on; and then I quickly get carried along, buoyed by the energy of the desperate, shabby lawyer as he struggles against the complacency of other lawyers and the police. It’s as if Ramón Valdés from El Chavo del Ocho set out to solve a crime.
More precisely, the setting is Puerto Varas, on Lago Llanquihue. A housewife disappears from a gated community. Has she been kidnapped, as her husband claims? Has she been murdered? Has she simply abandoned her family? The police investigate at a snail’s pace. Brisker progress is made by a hustling lawyer and his associates, who are moved as much by the compulsion to snoop as by the prospect of helping the family (and receiving payment). The story is modeled after a true one – I don’t know how closely. Stories of missing persons are the most wrenching to watch. I dread putting each episode on; and then I quickly get carried along, buoyed by the energy of the desperate, shabby lawyer as he struggles against the complacency of other lawyers and the police. It’s as if Ramón Valdés from El Chavo del Ocho set out to solve a crime.