Who Killed Sara? is perfectly crafted for Netflix success

The New York Times

"The style is telenovela-breathless, with the emotional temperature slightly dialed down for a general American audience," says Mike Hale of the Mexican mystery-melodrama, which returned for Season 2 this week. "There is a superabundance of plot, but in some ways Who Killed Sara? barely bothers telling a story or creating characters. We rarely see how people get from Point A to Point B within a scene — they’re always at Point B, with a bomb exploding or a gun being pointed or an anonymous correspondent texting enigmatic clues. The writers, led by the series’s creator, José Ignacio Valenzuela, have constructed their puzzle box with sufficient ingenuity to explain the show’s Netflix Top-10 status during its first season. The mystery has just enough interest, and the bare minimum of plausibility, to justify your attention. It’s the necessary binding agent, but your devotion to or dismissal of the show will be determined by how you respond to the soap-opera flourishes: the pregnant surrogate who masturbates while spying on her baby’s gay father in the shower, say, or the sociopathic master of the universe who impregnates his own daughter-in-law." ALSO: Manolo Cardona had to do computer and physical training to prepare for his Who Killed Sara? role.