Presunto culpable

This is a plodding Spanish remake of the 2015 Norwegian drama "Acquitted." It makes no improvements. The plot would fit in four episodes but the writers stretch it to thirteen.

Everything is based on the tense interactions and affairs between two families, one rich and one working class, involved in the shipping business. The padding includes endless landscape and sea views and frequently replayed footage of a hand slowly touching moss. And the same conversations occur over and over. We could solve the national debt if we had a dollar for every time someone says "you killed her" or "I didn't do it" or "why aren't you looking for the killer instead of talking to me" etc. Padding also includes red herrings and subplots within subplots; certain characters who take up screen time simply disappear toward the end, without explanation. I also noticed that no one locks the doors to their homes (people wander in at any hour) or lock desks or put passwords on phones (enabling snoopers to cause big trouble).

Each character is a one-note stereotype: a long-suffering matriarch, an angry vengeance seeker, a sad alcoholic, a political loudmouth, and there's the obligatory male/male sex affair. The leading man (played by handsome Miguel Angel Munoz) is hollow and wooden, with one emotion - anger - played repeatedly by slamming his fist on a table and yelling "fu**!". We're also supposed to believe an expressionless teenager is a world famous PhD marine biologist. Well, she does look in a microscope once and whisper feeble dialogue about "synthesizing proteins" to eliminate cancer. Did all the trouble start when someone failed to spotlight her at a press event? Slog through hours of repeated conversations to learn the truth.

There are some jarringly graphic sex scenes and the usual harsh profanity we can't escape in streaming shows these days. Nothing can be done about a script and direction that moves everything in slow motion with the same dialogue again and again. One waits in vain for a train derailment, a boiler explosion, a bus full of loud tourists, SOMETHING to alleviate the same droning talk. I'm giving this two stars, not one, only because it's not as aggressively vulgar and stupid as the Spanish language "Who Killed Sarah" on Netflix, which deserved no stars at all.