High Seas Review
High Seas is one of the most recent Spanish period dramas in the Netflix lineup. If you’re a fan of Grand Hotel, of Agatha Christie, of cozy crime, of period mysteries, of high-cheeked Spaniards, well, this is the show for you!
In fact, the creators of Grand Hotel and Velvet are behind this current mystery series (with a good dosing of melodrama). So, that gives you a sense of the style and production value of High Seas. It’s beautiful, engaging and quality stuff.
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Set in post-WWII, in the late 1940s, on the inaugural voyage of a luxury cruise liner sailing from Spain to Brazil, a wailing body falls into the brink. Pushed. That’s foul play number one. Numbers two and three promptly follow. And it’s still a long way to Brazil. And there is a ship full of suspects. Oh, it’s a premise worthy of an Agatha Christie novel.
Let the Sleuthing Begin
Our eager, amateur detectives on this ship are Eva and Carolina Villanueva (Ivana Baquero and Alejandra Onieva). These are two privileged women, rich, beautiful, recently orphaned. Their well-to-do father died two years prior, their mother years before.
Carolina is the older of the two, immaculately coiffed, professional, demure, responsible, not prone to rash decisions or actions. She’s set to be married on this trip to the ship’s owner Fernando Fábregas (Eloy Azorín).
Eva, on the other hand, is all rashness, jumping to conclusions and into situations with abandon. She’s a would-be novelist, sports pantsuits, and her dark curly locks are often defying their do’s. She immediately attracts the attention of the high-cheeked first officer on this ship, Nicolás Vázquez (Jon Kortajarena), who enters into a flirtatious banter. But things turn very serious, when they witness that first body falling into the sea.
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Not trusting the investigation to the ship’s investigator and harboring some secrets of their own, Eva and a less-than-willing Carolina enter into a separate investigation. Nicolás is quickly roped into this gumshoeing. And it all just goes from there.
There are plot twists and revelations aplenty. Every one of the eight episodes ends on a little revelatory cliffhanger, so be prepared to binge. There are suspects and suspicious activities galore. There is class tension between servants and their masters, between steerage class and first class. Yeah, there are all sorts of things brewing on this boat.
Oh, I’m really trying hard not to reveal too much of the plot here!
Beautiful and Fun
High Seas is a fun watch, a beautiful watch. Yes, it suffers on occasion from illogic and unreason, where characters do some silly things, but such is the nature of the cozy crime genre. It’s got some great dialogue, romance, and some great chemistry, and the melodramatic elements are deliciously fun.
And I did mention some high-cheeked gorgeousness, did I not? Because High Seas has that in spades, as well, especially in the form of one Officer Vázquez. They’re cheekbones you could lose your balance to while gazing up at them.
I’m looking forward to season two!
Content Note: Rated TV-MA for smoking, drinking, implied rape, and some intense situations. Overall, a TV-14 rating is more fitting. There’s nothing explicit.
Where to Watch: Netflix.
Have you watched the High Seas TV series yet? What are your thoughts on this new period drama show? Let me know in the comments.
Photo Credit: Netflix.
