Jon Gutiérrez (Hovik Keuchkerian), because of his good heart, commits an illegal act as a police officer. If he wants to clear his record, he must become the companion of Antonia Scott (Vicky Luengo), the most intelligent person on the planet but with mental health problems. He discovers that, beyond the cases announced in the news, there is a filthier reality: the one investigated by the members of Red Queen, a brigade that acts outside the law and that addresses cases that society could not even process.
After finding the corpse of a teenager with his skull split in half and staged as if it were part of an artistic performance, they must capture the culprit before he murders Carla Ortiz (Celia Freijeiro), the daughter of a millionaire businessman who has been kidnapped by Ezekiel, the same murderer.
Red Queen from Prime Video adapts the novel by Juan Gómez-Jurado, the best-selling in Spain in 2020 and 2021, and which was the beginning of a trilogy completed by Black Wolf and White King. The first episode, signed by Amaya Muruzábal (Hernán) as creator, is disturbing. Antonia, from the windows of her attic in Madrid, presents all the ways in which she could commit suicide.
Next, a macabre crime scene is offered, with an aesthetic look at the horror that anguishes due to how director Koldo Serra treats the placement of the corpse as an artistic work. And, when the disorder suffered by the protagonist is visually represented, the series seems to confirm itself as a gloomy approach to the psychopath thriller that takes inspiration from Bryan Fuller’s stimulating television Hannibal.
The season doesn’t stay true to the introduction. As if afraid of going too far into the darkness and thus scaring the mass public that has read the book or may be interested in the genre (as if cinema and television did not offer a multitude of raw, admired and successful psychothrillers!), Red Queen soon evolves into a more accessible, conventional product and, although it may be interpreted as a contradiction, also bright and friendly.
The intensity of the sequences with Ezekiel is lowered and an accelerated friendship develops between the two police officers. Hovik Keuchkerian is the audience’s gateway with his friendly, understanding, flirtatious, and somewhat brother-in-law homosexual police officer, who accepts Antonia’s kamikaze nature, partly motivated by the security provided by an IQ of 242. And, By establishing the dynamic between the two agents, even Antonia’s family traumas and mental and cognitive problems are relativized.
The adaptation doesn’t have the guts or aesthetic consistency it implies. Even the most original visual resources, those that represent Antonia Scott’s mental processes, are interspersed in fits and starts and in a somewhat arbitrary manner. The case, which is anticipated to be calculated to the millimeter, becomes increasingly implausible as Ezekiel takes center stage.
However, between the fruitful search for friendship between Luengo and Keuchkerian and the protagonist’s hypothesis that there is someone who plays with her existence, there remains a playful but minor thriller, designed for any viewer who reads the words “serial killer” in a synopsis and automatically hits the play button.
