A lot of foreign murder shows are about misery, about agony. Bereft parents bicker in muted kitchens while determined detectives avoid but inevitably confront their own personal failings; grim neighbors offer ominous condolences. Let us gaze at the violent, morose ocean. And then, let us gaze at the violent, morose ocean within.
The Spanish series “The Gardener” (in Spanish with subtitles, or dubbed), on Netflix, takes a campier, soapier approach. It still has ample bloodshed and intrigue, but it is a lot more soda than scotch. “The Gardener” has plenty in common with slick, dark shows like “Dexter” and “You,” though it more often feels like “Wednesday,” not only in its pop-goth vibes but also in its reliance on its protagonist’s wide-eyed stare.
Elmer (Álvaro Rico) is a young man with a passion for horticulture. Well, maybe not “passion”: He has no emotions, according to his witchy mom, China (Cecilia Suárez), a fount of Freudian oddities. They were in a car accident when Elmer was little, which caused brain damage that affected his ability to experience and interpret feelings. China has had to teach him how to emote, how to fake it, practicing facial expressions with him as a child and directing his speech and behavior as an adult.
Sure, there are downsides to raising a blank sociopath. But the upside is that you can craft him into a perfect hit man, which is what China has done. They use their gardening business as a cover for their murder-for-hire work, and they use the literal gardens to bury the bodies — superb fertilizer, the characters say.
And then one day Elmer is dispatched to dispatch Violeta (Catalina Sopelana), a young schoolteacher, and suddenly he wonders if maybe he isn’t so empty inside. Maybe he has a lot of feelings, and maybe those feelings are mostly about Violetta and how much he likes her. Maybe instead of killing her, he’ll woo her. Maybe this is love! Or … maybe it’s a brain tumor.
You don’t have to know all the #boymom lore to guess that China is no fan of Violeta and that, in fact, Violeta could never understand Elmer the way she does, never love him for who he truly is, as she does. A boy’s best friend is his mother and all that.
This adds up mostly to indulgent, histrionic fun: Scenes are scored with organ music, and everything is very dun-dun-duuuuun when the focus is on Elmer and China. Far less interesting is the inevitable police subplot, but where goes a TV murderer, so goes a dogged female cop with boundary issues.
SIDE QUESTS
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“The Gardener” is nowhere near as good as “Hannibal,” but it did make me think about the second episode of that show, in which a serial killer grows mushrooms on his victims. That’s on Amazon Prime Video and Pluto.
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If you want another weird-family show with botanicals, but not a murder show, “Flowers” is a terrific dark comedy à la “The Royal Tenenbaums,” starring Olivia Colman. That’s on Amazon.
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If you’re thinking, “Wait, there’s another Olivia Colman show with botanicals that is indeed a murder show,” that’s “Landscapers,” and that’s on Max.
Margaret Lyons is a television critic at The Times, and writes the TV parts of the Watching newsletter.
The post ‘The Gardener’ Is a Great Pop-Goth Spanish Murder Series appeared first on New York Times.
