When murder becomes just another business, you enter the familiar chilling world of Netflix thrillers, writes ABHI SINGHAL
There have many thriller TV series like ‘You’ that keep you numb and go damn but The Gardener is somewhere something different and very gripping created by Miguel Sáez Carral. The TV series is a Spanish romantic thriller streaming on Netflix.
The series opens with a tense scene: Elmer (Álvaro Rico) calmly approaches the sea and murders an unsuspecting swimmer. What follows in the first three episodes is a sequence of brutal killings of innocent people, all orchestrated for monetary gain. At the heart of this darkness is Elmer’s mother, La China Jurado (played with unnerving precision by Cecilia Suárez), who manipulates her emotionally void son into becoming a killer-for-hire.
Elmer, traumatised by a childhood car accident, is portrayed as emotionally detached, unable to feel love, guilt or remorse. Álvaro Rico delivers a striking performance, capturing the paradox of a man wrestling with his emptiness. His stoic expressions and stiff tone give the series its haunting core.
The story gains emotional complexity with the introduction of Violeta (Catalina Sopelana), a gentle nursery school teacher who unwittingly becomes a target for assassination due to a case of mistaken identity. Sopelana brings warmth and vulnerability to the role, serving as the emotional counterbalance to Elmer’s coldness. The romantic tension between the two adds a tender, human element to an otherwise dark narrative.
Cecilia Suárez is mesmerising as La China Jurado, a cunning matriarch with a murky past, who hides her criminal empire behind the façade of a garden centre. Her disdain for Violeta injects familiar dramatic tension, reminiscent of classic soap-style maternal possessiveness. Yet here, it is underscored with a far more sinister undertone.
Perhaps the most disturbing, and oddly poetic, element of the series is the use of the victims’ bodies as fertiliser to enrich the garden. It is a macabre metaphor that adds a gothic flourish to the storyline. The garden itself becomes a silent witness to the horrors that unfold, lush, vibrant and fed by death.
The Gardener is a visually striking series, filled with aesthetic scenes of blooming flowers and rich colours, which juxtapose sharply with its grim subject matter. This contrast only heightens the emotional unease, making the viewer question the price of beauty and the cost of love.
In six tightly crafted episodes, The Gardener manages to blend romance, psychological trauma, family drama and crime thriller into a cohesive and deeply unsettling narrative. For fans of shows like You or Dark Desire, this series offers a fresh twist on a common storyline that is beautiful, brutal and strangely hypnotic.
Highlights That Make The Gardener Stand Out:
- Unique blend of aesthetic beauty and darkness
- Strong performances, especially from Álvaro Rico and Cecilia Suárez
- Reasons The Gardener May Miss the Mark
- Emotionally heavy and morbid themes with cold-blooded murders and emotional detachment
- Predictable family murder drama
Rating: 3.5/5
