Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Invisible Girl’ On Hulu, Where A Teenage Girl And Her Police Detective Dad Each Investigate The Murder Of One Of Her Classmates

Shows that take place in a small town where everyone could be a suspect in a murder can often be frustrating, because the writers of the show send viewers down dark alleys with leads that ultimately never pan out. In a new Hulu series from Spain, a teen’s murder isn’t just being investigated by the town’s lead detective, but by his daughter, who was one of her classmates.

THE INVISIBLE GIRL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A girl is shown on a ride spinning high over a carnival.

The Gist: The girl on the ride is a 17-year-old named Julia (Zoe Stein); the fair is in the Andalusian town of Cárdena. As Julia and her friend Patri (Marta Hoyos) enjoy the fair, we see a classmate of theirs, Aurora (Marta Vallés) getting ready for a hookup. The bright, noisy environment of the carnival is contrasted with where Aurora meets her date, in the dark and quiet of their school’s gym, which is supposed to be locked. Aurora is surprised by who shows up, and starts running. She trips; then comes up against the locked gate.

Julia wakes up a bit hungover the next morning; she gets a call from Aurora’s mom Vera (Tamara Casellas) that Aurora never came home. But she also has to deal with her father, Miguel Ángel (Daniel Grao), with whom she has a tense relationship. She skips breakfast to go meet her friend Emi (Javier Córdoba).

When they hear sirens, they see a crowd outside their school and a covered body outside the gym entrance. It doesn’t take long for Julia to figure out that it’s Aurora. Her father Miguel, the Civil Guard lieutenant who is in charge of the case, comes out of the gym, having already started the investigation. A scrunchie and a compass was found near Aurora’s body.

Miguel starts his investigations with the teachers; in flashback, we see Aurora confronted by her philosophy teacher over her disengagement with the other members of her class, and her showing him her arms to prove she’s not cutting herself. We also see her meet up with her father Bernardo (Ignacio Mateos), whom she’s meeting without telling her mother. She also seems like she struck up a friendship with Emi that Julia never knew about.

While Miguel starts doing his job and investigating, Julia decides to start looking into things herself, especially when her father refuses to tell her anything. She starts by sneaking a look at the case file, including the grisly crime scene photos. Miguel gets a look at Aurora’s body after her autopsy, which notes that she has self-inflicted cuts on her stomach, an abrasion from where a pendant (given to her by her dad, we find out) was snatched, and a new tattoo with coordinates on it.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Invisible Girl (which can be seen in its original Spanish under its original title, La Chica Invisible) has the same feeling of other shows where a murder takes place in a bucolic small town and everyone’s a suspect, like Broadchurch.

Our Take: The Invisible Girl was adapted by Marina Efron, Norberto López Amado and Carmen López-Areal from the novel La Chica Invisible, written by the Spanish novelist Blue Jeans. In a lot of ways, it’s a pretty standard small town murder mystery. But what sets it apart is that the small town’s lead detective and his daughter will be conducting parallel investigations, and both of what they do will be affected by the tense relationship they have with each other.

There are hints given in the first episode that this tension has been brewing since Julia’s mother/Miguel’s wife died, prompting their move to Cárdena. Aurora helped Julia get acclimated to her new school and town when they first moved, but we wonder what else Julia has had to endure. We’re not sure if Miguel’s constant annoyance with Julia is rooted in something other than just standard parent-and-teenager squabbles, but it does seem like Miguel is overprotective of Julia, even though Julia gives him no reason to actually worry about her.

One of the problems we always have with these kinds of small-town murder stories is that we get scenes that are mostly red herrings. In the first episode, we see a few of them, like seeing Aurora’s English teacher being distraught in her car and clutching a book of poems, or Iván (Hugo Welzel) whom Julia has become close with despite Emi and others warning her about him, telling two of Julia’s bullies that “we’re fucked.” The flashback where Aurora tells Emi, probably not for the first time, that they’re better off as friends also feels like one of those red herrings.

We get the feeling we’re going to see a lot of these, especially as Miguel and Julia conduct their individual investigations. Whether those will distract viewers or not will depend on the strength of the overall mystery.

Sex and Skin: Aurora is naked on the medical examiner’s table, of course, but that’s about it.

Parting Shot: A montage of people being distraught over Aurora’s death, including Bernardo bashing his hands on the wall while he sobs, to the point where he leaves streaks of blood.

Sleeper Star: We’ll choose Javier Córdoba as Emi, just for his speech about how outer space isn’t actually silence.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Julia, I’ve told you tons of times: Forks with forks, spoons with spoons. This is chaos.” Wow, Miguel is really on a run with his nitpicking, isn’t he?

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Invisible Girl works because of its story of parallel investigations, by people with different perspectives on the person who was murdered as well as who might be involved.

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.