mon 09/12/2024

I Know Who You Are, series finale, BBC Four review - gripping, but no one to root for | reviews, news & interviews

I Know Who You Are, series finale, BBC Four review - gripping, but no one to root for

I Know Who You Are, series finale, BBC Four review - gripping, but no one to root for

The mystery of Juan Elías and Ana Saura is resolved, but there's plenty more to sort out. Contains spoilers

Guilty, but of what? Francesc Garrido as Juan Elías in 'I Know Who You Are'Filmax International

The first thing to say is that this wasn’t the actual end. BBC Four scheduled I Know Who You Are to run two episodes a night over five Saturdays. The innocent punter might have assumed that after 10 x 70 minutes of the Spanish import, we’d arrive at some sort of terminus.

With only a few minutes still to run, who wasn’t thinking, crikey, still quite a tick list of bows to tie up? Was Juan Elías, whom we now know is a killer (only not of Ana Saura), going to be shopped by Alicia, and would she secure immunity from prosecution beforehand? Or would Eva Durán get there first? Would someone spring Ana from her dungeon in time to witness the death of her father? And would Marta Hess, Spain’s most irritating attorney, be struck off for strutting between the courts and police HQ with a look of insufferable smugness on her mug?

Read theartsdesk's review of the I Know Who You Are series 2 finale

It’s not in any of the BBC’s promotional literature, but in fact there are another six episodes of the drama to run [for clarification on this, see comments thread below]. If and when BBC Four broadcasts them, all these questions will play out in the style established so far: twistily, mega-absurdly and - let's be honest - grippingly. It was at least a suspenseful moment to pause in a lay-by for a breather. The past has caught up with the present: Elías has remembered he's a murderer, Ana has been located, Alicia has finally decided to do someone outside her immediate family a good turn, Eva has seen through Elías and refused to hand over the gun which (though she doesn’t yet know it) links him to the murder of Ezequiel Cortés, and Santi Mur has opted for more direct action than emetic blogging. (Pictured below: Blanca Portillo as Alicia Castro)Blanca Portillo in I Know Who You AreIt is, of course, posh bunkum. The plot’s chicanes and hairpin bends would test the credulity of an infant who still believes in the tooth fairy. Take Ana’s emergence from 12 days of unconsciousness. There she lay like Sleeping Beauty, unsoiled and only a little thirsty, swiftly revived by a drip that appeared out of nowhere. Santi Mur’s blogging rather tested the concept of sub judice, as did the antics of the press. Their habit of stabbing microphones at grieving relatives makes our redtop phone hackers look like cherubim and seraphim. As for his twin in a coma, Pol no sooner found out about him than succumbed to his own fit of amnesia: his only function was to prove that the Elíases know how to keep a dark secret. (Pictured below: Álex Monner as Pol)

With the plot zigzagging hither and thither like a Jack Russell with ADHD, it was easy for any viewer to miss the odd trick. But here’s a list, not exhaustive, of quibbles and niggles. It took nine episodes for anyone to work out that a six-foot grave doesn’t dig itself in one short evening. What was Cortés doing at the villa at the same time as Ana? Even though her father was dying of cancer, 100,000 euros seems rather a lot of money to leave in the possession of a money-changer in Bangkok. There was little evidence of the antagonism between Ana and her stepmother Silvia so you had to take it on trust that this was the motive for her drastic plan to emigrate rather than complete her law degree. Marc seemed bizarrely familiar with Alicia’s jogging route. Charry’s death-rattle accusation was a straight lift from the soapiest Victorian melodrama. Are university elections really that interesting to the wider media? And how come the country villa of Hector Castro had been conveniently left to crumble all these years?Álex Monner in I Know Who You AreBut like all motorway pile-ups, it was difficult to take your eyes off it. The central concept of a man who has lost his memory and thus driven a 4x4 through a whole chain of evidence was robust enough to keep an audience on its toes and wanting to know more. Integral to this was Francesc Garrido’s compelling one-note performance as Elías, a man so divided against himself he had no coordinates for defining his own reality: was he really himself with the intense, idealistic Eva (Aida Foch, pictured below) or with the evil coeval Alicia who, played with marrow-chilling conviction by Blanca Portillo, was not the best advertisement for the Spanish judiciary. That triangle has been at the heart of everything. Forget Pol and Marc and all the other pouting walk-ons. The Elías marriage was the Macbeths in charcoal-grey labelwear. Full marks to a costume department which ran with the idea that you are what you wear. Eva Durán’s joyless overcoat deserves its own spin-off series with a co-starring role for Marta Hess’s repugnant leather blouson and peroxide Monica’s push-up croptops.

As the story unfurled, a picture emerged of a toxic pair of families and a couple of sexaholic law firms in which anyone and everyone could be suspected of anything from quasi-incest to pragmatic murder (meanwhile on campus an indecisive girl drove the plot by sleeping with both a brother and a sister). It was as if Murder on the Orient Sexpress had been rerouted to Barcelona. The only real adult was Julieta (Noa Fontanals), a child old before her time who was alone capable of provoking a smile in Elías, which arrived at the 11th hour like a blue moon in a month of Sundays.Aida Foch in I Know Who You AreWhat can we expect next? Pol knows that Ana has been found. Alicia, whose blood is currently smeared all over those lovely big windows, still has a pulse. Eva has made an enemy. Spare a thought for poor old Heredia, who has been imprisoned on remand, and can’t pull off the trick of bribing inmates not to kill him because Elías has already bought them a load of TVs (Spanish prisons are a bit laxer about these things than Parkhurst).

The acting has been nothing if not fiercely committed, not least from Susana Abaitua as Ana discovering herself in the company of a cold-blooded killer. It sounded good – soundtrack by Arnau Bataller – and looked sort of not very Spanish. The sun didn't shine much, and the cinematography contrived to make Barcelona hard and unwelcoming.

But then I Know Who You Are has chilliness at its heart. Everyone said "lo siento"; no one meant it. When even the missing victim, a right little trouble magnet, had attempted to entrap her uncle as a rapist, there wasn’t anyone at all to root for.

Enjoying The Arts Desk? To access all our coverage of TV, film, theatre, art, new music, opera, classical, dance, comedy, books and gaming, updated daily, buy an annual subscription for only £30

@JasperRees

A picture emerged of a toxic pair of families and a couple of sexaholic law firms in which anyone and everyone could be suspected of anything

rating

Editor Rating: 
4
Average: 4 (1 vote)

Share this article

Comments

The comments on here made me chuckle ... I agree very mean and thoughtless of the BBC and does not make any sense at all to show 6 episodes later in the year .... Very disappointed

I'd like the BBC to tell us in future if series are a "cliff-hanger".... I enjoyed it, thought the final episode was the weakest and am not sure I'll invest more time in it unless that definitely is a conclusion... The word "Homeland" comes to mind

A date would be nice BBC? Just how long have I got to wait to see the ending?

The fact that they haven't given a date, makes me think that there is a possibility it will be "never".

Caught this series around the 5th episode, got completely engrossed and then it ended! My wife explained the plot. You can't leave it like that! When is the 2nd series?

This is easily one of the worst foreign programmes BBC4 have shown. Interminably slow, needlessly convoluted, utterly far-fetched, and the only interest was deciding who you would be least likely to root for, as character after character displayed no redeeming features at all, and behaviour that made them even less likeable even as it made them more implausible. I too was all for giving it up as a bad job after episode six, but hung on due to the false promise that there were ten compressed episodes instead of sixteen full-length ones. But I should not have been fooled - it would be beyond belief that there could be anything more interminable than the episodes as shown, as the claimed compression of sixteen episodes into ten would imply. Actually, it might have been better if it had been compressed.... Anyway, as you might have gathered by now, I won’t be watching it when it comes back. Who did what to who, and with what? I am past caring. Bad cess to BBC4 though; showing it was bad enough, but this ten episodes/sixteen episodes confusion means that while six of the ten hours of my life I will never get back are my own fault, the other four are all theirs. How are you going to make this up to me, BBC4?

Please help me - I am looking for the sound track : I need I need to fall asleep with you tonight / plays at the end of the 4th episode . Please help me....

Season 1 all finished now, as dark as it gets. But BBC iPlayer put a little caption up at the end saying the series will return to BBC 4. However, no where else can I find any mention of a Season 2. Perhaps if I could read Spanish, I could search and find some info? Maybe someone else does speak the language here and finds something?

A gripping and absurd series (now all parts have been shown) reviewed accurately and as hilariously as it deserved. Spoiler alert if you haven't watched the whole 2 series: the baddies don't get their much-deserved come-uppance! Certainly Julietta doesn't deserve such a terrible family but she does deserve a series of her own. Get her out of that poisonous group of liars and killers and into a role surrounded by more humane characters, and where her acting skills can be properly appreciated as they are better than any in her screen family in this daft but compelling nonsense. Only she seemed to believe any of it and have a consistent character and believable response to the twists and turns of a plot apparently made up as they went on, with scripts written about 5 minutes before they had to be spoken. Made a great change from many bleak Scandi series, though I like those too. Perhaps the various countries could get together and produce the ultimate weird Saturday night viewing for us?

Pages

Add comment

The future of Arts Journalism

 

You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!

We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d

And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters