Review of Someone Has to Die

A story about a wealthy but dystopian family in Spain in the years after World War II. Nicely filmed. Acceptable English dubbing. Correct automobiles and wardrobe for the period. Generally good production values all around. But the script is nothing but a pastiche of implausible events, narrative threads that go nowhere, amateurish speechifying, and an underlying political screed aimed at the abuses of the Franco dictatorship. And as in many films I have seen from Spain, a lot of one-liners insulting Mexico. None of it makes much sense. We have seen many of these actors before, their talents wasted on this predictable mélange of one stereotype after another: the strict father; the frustrated wife, the gay son, the rigid class structure, the violence and brutality of the period, the obligatory nude scenes. Because it is a series that comes to an abrupt ending after only three longish episodes, one gets the feeling it was intended originally to be either an extended series or a full movie, winding up without much of it actually making it to the cutting room floor where it belonged.