Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Marked Heart’ On Netflix, A Colombian Telenovela About A Murder, Organ Trafficking, And A Husband Bent On Revenge

No matter what the topic, telenovelas are inherently silly. Why? Because they’re designed to be soapy, with over-the-top performances and shocking plot twists. But can there be a telenovela about people who harvest organs by murdering healthy victims?

THE MARKED HEART: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: As a song by Carlos Vives plays, a car drives down a dark road.

The Gist: Valeria (Margarita Muñoz) and Simón (Michel Brown) are a happy couple celebrating their anniversary. With two great kids, their lives seem perfect. Then, suddenly, the tire on their car has a blowout, they swerve past an oncoming truck and hit a tree. Simón is unconscious, and the men in the truck come to help. But all they do is grab Valeria and drive away. One of the men, Mariachi (Moisés Arizmendi), calls someone and says “we have a donor.”

Flash back to earlier that day. Valeria is completing a marathon, and is being photographed by a woman named Camila (Ana Lucía Domínguez). Camila rushes off, bumping into Valeria, because she’s late to her own wedding. She’s marrying Zacarías (Sebastian Martinez), a wealthy and influential person who is a very successful consultant to political campaigns. During the ceremony, however, Camila collapses. The doctor tells Zacarías that her need for a heart transplant is urgent; however, Camila is far down on the transplant list, so the prospects of getting a donor heart are low.

Before the accident, we see glimpses of Valeria and Simón’s life together, and how they met. We also see that Mariachi and his men had been tracking Valeria, and they laid out nails on the road in order to cause the accident. So as they speed Valeria to get her heart cut out, Simón desperately looks for her. Meanwhile, Zacarías tells Camila that a heart has been found, and she prepares for the transplant, not knowing that her donor is alive and well and will be murdered to help her live.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Marked Heart has the same feeling as telenovelas on Netflix like The House Of Flowers, but it’s the darkest subject matter we’ve seen from a telenovela in quite some time.

Our Take: We’re not sure if we’re OK with watching a telenovela that combines broad characters, multiple plot twists that are somewhat fantastical, and intimate relationships that make little real life sense with a plot that involves murder, organ trafficking and revenge. Creator Leonardo Padrón has bundled all of that into The Marked Heart (original title: Pálpito), and it sometimes feels like a bit too much for even telenovela fans to contemplate.

The first thing that gives us the squinchies is that the first couple of episodes are going to be spent showing Valeria try to get out of what seems like the inevitable, but it ultimately won’t work. It can’t; if she stays alive, there’s no reason for Simón to go after Zacarías and the traffickers who targeted his wife. There is definitely intrigue surrounding how they targeted Valeria; our thought is that Zacarías saw Camila’s photos of the marathon, looked up the results, and went from there. So Camila, when she eventually finds out, will likely feel culpable.

At the very least, the show is setting up for the three main players to go their separate ways, then reconnect in different combinations. That means that eventually, Camilla and Simón will connect romantically, which gives us even more heebie jeebies.

But the over-the-top dramatics in this first episode, plus some convenient plotting that sets these things in motion, made us roll our eyes. Somehow, Zacarías targets Valeria and sets things in motion within hours of Camila’s collapse. Camila seems well enough to leave the hospital and upload her marathon photos for an exhibition of hers, despite the idea that she was on death’s door. Valeria’s abductors didn’t think to turn off or ditch her phone, so Simón uses the tracking app to follow her. At a checkpoint, Mariachi and his men shoot the soldiers dead, and somehow Simón comes upon the scene and no one else is around.

It’s just too much, and considering the dark subject matter, it could have been treated much more seriously and been a much more affecting drama. We just don’t think marrying a dark topic like this with the telenovela style works in the long run.

Sex and Skin: Zacarías flashes back to the early days of his relationship with Camila, including some glimpses of nudity as they have sex.

Parting Shot: Even though Camila is thought to be brain dead after Mariachi shot her while she tried to escape, she opens her eyes right before her chest is cut open.

Sleeper Star: Domínguez’s character Camila is quite naïve about everything as she trusts Zacarías that the heart she’s getting was obtained on the up and up. But it’ll be interesting to see Camila change as she learns the truth.

Most Pilot-y Line: “I’ve made five idiots president in three different countries. And I’ll do it this time, too,” Zacarías says to his staff about the latest candidate they’re working with. That’s one of the over-the-top things about this show that feel out of place amongst the dark subject matter.

Our Call: SKIP IT. The Marked Heart is just too silly for such a dark topic. Yes, we know that telenovelas are inherently silly, but here it just doesn’t work.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.