Like the sublime 'Life On Mars' this superb Spanish time-travelling adventure weaves out of chronoclasm a wise, witty and altogether wonderful drama about the Quixotic healing process of nostalgia. Riding various hobby-horses of Spanish history, our three dashing agents of the Ministry of Time, like a benign Adjustment Bureau, set forth to right Spanish history whenever it threatens to go wrong. Spain's only great secret - as the Minister of Time himself confides - is this vividly present access to her own stirring history.
Apart from TV's 'Life On Mars,' I haven't enjoyed a drama series as much as this since I listened to the time-travelling adventures of 'Pha, the Phoenician' on the radio, all of sixty years ago: I experienced the same child-like wonder, watching time being played with. This is a tribute to the sheer magic woven by a series deeply in love with the history of it's own land, Spain. How wonderful to see a fantasy that dares to imagine the past as salvation, in preference to damnation - which implies that the future will be as carefully curated to build a world we can be glad to be alive in. I'm tired of gloomy and hideous dystopias that make you want to stop time: This drama makes time go with all the swing and swagger of a Spaniard's sweeping soul.
Of course, the personal tragedy of the Agent from our own time could possibly hint at the sad 'Life On Mars' type threat, from which the time-adventure proves to be only the psychic escape of a ruined mind - - - If so, how piquant if it should transpire that Spain's ownership of this underground warren of the Past is but that romantic country's national dream of another vast Empire, where Ministers of the Spanish Crown may still hold sway - and also one ordinary protagonist's mental fugue from his own tragic reality? After all, it is intimated to this new recruit by the Minister himself, at the outset, in the establishing episode, that our Quixotically heroic paramedic has the choice either to serve the Ministry of Time, or to be reconciled to incarceration for life in a mental institution, as a danger to himself and others.
I cannot praise this witty, stylish series too much. I shall be relishing every episode on Netflix (to whom thanks are due for making it available).
Apart from TV's 'Life On Mars,' I haven't enjoyed a drama series as much as this since I listened to the time-travelling adventures of 'Pha, the Phoenician' on the radio, all of sixty years ago: I experienced the same child-like wonder, watching time being played with. This is a tribute to the sheer magic woven by a series deeply in love with the history of it's own land, Spain. How wonderful to see a fantasy that dares to imagine the past as salvation, in preference to damnation - which implies that the future will be as carefully curated to build a world we can be glad to be alive in. I'm tired of gloomy and hideous dystopias that make you want to stop time: This drama makes time go with all the swing and swagger of a Spaniard's sweeping soul.
Of course, the personal tragedy of the Agent from our own time could possibly hint at the sad 'Life On Mars' type threat, from which the time-adventure proves to be only the psychic escape of a ruined mind - - - If so, how piquant if it should transpire that Spain's ownership of this underground warren of the Past is but that romantic country's national dream of another vast Empire, where Ministers of the Spanish Crown may still hold sway - and also one ordinary protagonist's mental fugue from his own tragic reality? After all, it is intimated to this new recruit by the Minister himself, at the outset, in the establishing episode, that our Quixotically heroic paramedic has the choice either to serve the Ministry of Time, or to be reconciled to incarceration for life in a mental institution, as a danger to himself and others.
I cannot praise this witty, stylish series too much. I shall be relishing every episode on Netflix (to whom thanks are due for making it available).