Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Wrong Side Of The Tracks’ On Netflix, A Spanish Thriller About A Former War Hero Trying To Protect His Granddaughter From Drug Dealers

It’s rare to see a pulpy series get a layered story that makes it look and feel more like a prestige TV series. But David Bermejo proved it could be done with Unauthorized Living three years ago. He’s back with a new story, set in a Madrid neighborhood that’s going downhill, but hasn’t crumbled completely because of one really angry man.

WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACKS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man who is sleeping in his apartment hears and argument and a gunshot outside. He calls the emergency line three times but no one comes out. He explains he served in Bosnia and knows a gunshot when he hears it.

The Gist: Tirso Abantos (Jose Coronado) owns a hardware store in the Madrid neighborhood of Entrevías and hates how thugs, gangsters and junkies have taken over. The next day at his store, he takes matters into his own hands when a bunch of young guys wouldn’t stop blasting their car stereo; he takes his car and bashes the other car. That’s right before he goes in to a surprise birthday party.

He doesn’t really want the party, and thinks its a ploy to get him to sell his apartment, of which his kids own half. When his granddaughter Irene (Nona Sobo) shows up late, on the back of a scooter driven by her boyfriend Nelson (Felipe Londoño), he criticizes her mother, Jimena (Maria Molins) for being too permissive.

Irene and Nelson have a plan that would help them both leave the city, involving stealing a kilo of heroin from a kingpin named Sandro (Franky Martin). But that plan goes awry when Nelson gets picked up by the police. Out of desperation, Irene has Tirso pick her up in the worst part of the neighborhood, prompting him to offer his daughter a deal: She stays with him. He threatens to go to the police with the heroin if she doesn’t comply. And he’s not the kindly grandfather you’d expect.

In the meantime, Inspector Amanda Armatose (Itziar Atienza) investigates with Deputy Inspector Ezequiel Fandiño (Luis Zahera), who knows the neighborhood and tries to show her that it’s up to them to keep the ecosystem of crime going instead of disrupting it to the point where even worse people come in. She doesn’t know, however, that he’s also on Sandro’s payroll. He also has a romantic tie to Nelson’s mother Gladys (Laura Ramos).

Things get more desperate for Irene and Nelson, however, after she arranges for Nelson to break in and take the heroin, he gets caught, and Tirso angrily washes the heroin down the sink.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Wrong Side Of The Tracks (Original title: Entrevías) reminds us of Gran Torino, where an older man takes matters into his own hands when people underestimate him due to his age. Though we’ll say, the character of Tirso makes Clint Eastwood’s character in Torino look like a cuddly teddy bear by comparison. There are also some comparisons to be made between this show and Liam Neeson’s Taken films.

Our Take: Wrong Side Of The Tracks comes from David Bermejo, who gave us the hit Unauthorized Living; in fact, he brings over both Coronado and Zahera from that show to star in this new story. And, like the previous show, he packs so much story into each episode that they move along despite the long run times (the first episode is 80 minutes long).

Also like the previous show, it’s a pulpy subject that’s given multiple layers to shine it to a prestige TV sheen. There’s the main story of Tirso trying to keep Irene out of the clutches of the drug dealers in his neighborhood, and what he does when he fails at that task. There’s the matter that he’s a hard man who has grown embittered over the years, but has people he served with who are loyal to him. He also has issues with how poorly it seems his children are managing their own families.

But none of that is couched in making Tirso look like a caring man. He has no problem calling Irene “Chinese” even though she’s Vietnamese, but he’s no better than pretty much everyone else that encounters Irene. He had his issues as a father bringing up his kids after their mom died, but it still seems they have a link to him. He’s a grouch and relentlessly negative, who tells people exactly what’s on his mind, no matter how cruel it is. But he also seems to be the only person who cares that his neighborhood is being handed over to criminals.

On the other side is Ezequiel, who thinks he has a handle on the neighborhood’s crime scene because he’s playing both sides of the fence. But it seems like this kerfuffle with Nelson and Sandro is going to challenge that. As the series goes on, it does seem like he’s going to have an adversarial relationship with Tirso, but we’ll see how long that goes on as things spiral out of control.

Coronado so thoroughly embodies the hard-bitten Tirso that you believe his negativity isn’t an act. But Sobo is a surprisingly good foil for him, and doesn’t play Irene as someone who actually needs his help, at least at first. We’re also looking forward to seeing Zahera and Coronado in more scenes together.

Sex and Skin: When Irene and Nelson reunite, they have sex on top of the abandoned train car where they spend a lot of time together.

Parting Shot: Despite both Tirso and Nelson being on the overpass not far from Irene, neither see her. She gets in a car as a way to repay Sandro for losing the heroin. She screams “No!” when she realizes exactly why she’s in that car.

Sleeper Star: Itziar Atienza’s role of Amanda Armatose is more or less the outsider’s perspective. What we don’t know is if she’s going to follow Ezequiel’s lead and let the criminal ecosystem in the neighborhood alone or will she actually try to bust people for, you know, committing crimes?

Most Pilot-y Line: As he sees Irene and Nelson having a passionate goodbye kiss, Tirso says to Jimena, “Will you say something? Or are you waiting for him to impregnate her in front of us?” That’s some grouchy stuff right there.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Wrong Side Of The Tracks has a layered story that’s bolstered by a lead performance from Coronado that makes you actually root for the most bitterly caustic character on the whole show.

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.