Who is Erin Carter at the IMDb
If you are going to give your TV series an interrogative
title it would probably makes sense that you ensure that after enduring 7
episodes your audience is likely to give a shit; but I didn’t.
This by the numbers and cliché-ridden Netflix drama could be
seen as a harmless pastime but the lazy writing and terrible acting made it
feel like a complete waste of time.
The timeline of the series jumps around a bit but basically
you have a woman living with her husband and child in Barcelona – but there are
secrets! Things start to unravel when she stumbles upon a supermarket robbery
and takes down one of the baddies who recognises her. We’re meant to be
impressed by her fighting skills, but the bad guy goes down like he’s in the
WWF and all our girl does is some high-level shoving. One robber escapes and
Erin is worried her cover may be blown.
What cover you ask? Well, a long flashback shows her at
police training college and quickly kicked out when she beats up an annoying
fellow cadet. The predictable shady man from black ops invites her to join his
division and within five minutes she’s infiltrated a gang and helping with a
bullion robbery. You’d think someone with more that a week at training college
would be a better option, but a quick training montage puts that concern to
bed.
The robbery goes tits up with one woman bank robber
seemingly getting killed leaving her annoying daughter at a loose end. Erin
confirms her recruitment was a total arse up when she flees to Spain with the
child and sets up a new life.
Unfortunately, the supermarket robbers, who wear the same animal masks as at the bullion robbery – they must have gotten a job lot, - know Erin was the rat in the crew and soon the mysterious ‘Mr Big’ is after her.
Fortunately, Erin has a gullible husband and a helper in the
shape of Emilio, who is a cop and who is happy to get involved in Erin’s
manipulative schemes. Elsewhere a local bitch is making Erin’s school teacher
ambitions difficult, but fortunately local businessman Duggie Henshall is on
hand to exert some influence. I don’t think Henshall ever got over being
outsmarted by Supercrew in ‘Common as Muck’ as he’s absolutely dreadful here.
He looks like someone reading lines in a language he doesn’t understand who’s
also late for a dental appointment. It gets worse when you get the predictable
big reveal!
The meagre plot is spread wafer thin over the 7 episodes with the annoying daughter’s visions and drawings of people in animal masks and her behavioural issues being a complete bore. You do get the lovely Susannah Fielding from ‘This Time’ – A-ha – but she is given precious little to do apart from being a busy body at Erin's school.
The whole farrago is meant to be like a female Jason Bourne
with our heroine displaying mad skills – in truth the fighting and action are
very poor and lacks the visceral punch of those movies. There is one decent car
crash, but you can tell the budget went on that as the flashback sequences in
‘England’ show a sun baked paradise where they forgot to put down road markings
– a bit like Barcelona really!
Evan Amhad does OK in the lead with poor material, but she
didn’t convince whatsoever as a pocket dynamo superspy with multiple layers and
a complicated past. She is better than her husband Jordi however, who looks
like he wandered onto set looking for a lost dog.
The whole production seems by the numbers with no doubt a
Spanish language version shot at the same time. There are a lot of subtitled
sequences and it looks like an international audience was the plan from the
start. I’m sure this made fiscal sense for the bean counters at Netflix but the
result is an unsatisfying offering that will doubtlessly play equally bad in
all markets.
The finale was unsatisfying, not least because it suggests a
sequel may be in the works. If you want a Lady Bourne straight from Wish.com
this may be the offering that you seek, but otherwise I’d suggest the answer to
the question posted by the title is ‘couldn’t care less’.
Best Bit: The police car chase was ridiculous but a good
smash up at the end.
‘W’ Rating: 9/23
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