Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Drug Squad: Costa Del Sol’ On Netflix, A Spanish Cop Drama About The ‘70s Drug Trade In A Coastal Town (2024)

We always love the vibe of ’70s cop movies and TV: The car chases! The gun battles where no one comes close to getting shot! The mustaches! The whole “treating women as objects” bit, though? Not so much. But the rest is great. So when a show tries to recreate that vibe, we watch closely. That’s the vibe of the ’70s-set series Drug Squad: Costa del Sol. Read on for more…

DRUG SQUAD: COSTA DEL SOL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man on a bluff, smoking and looking over the coastal town where he lives. “No wonder why people like this so much,” he says in voice over. He’s looking at the town of Torremolinos, which used to be a “dump” outside the city of Malaga on Spain’s Costa del Sol.

The Gist: The man, a national police detective named Bruno López (Hugo Silva), thinks about how things have changed in Spain since Franco’s time, then collapses, having been shot in the gut. As he lies there losing consciousness, he thinks about how the drug squad he was a part of didn’t even exist six months ago. Then he lights up another cigarette.

Flash back six months, to June, 1977. Bruno and his partner Terrón (Jesús Castro) come to Torremolinos to track a car thief named Dandy (Manolo Caro), who stops at a local disco. As they’re doing that, they get word that two men have committed an armed robbery in a casino. Not only do they respond but also two other cops: The suave Leo Villa (Álvaro Cervantes), who interrupts sex in his sports coupe to respond to the call, and the cerebral Martin Pulido (Miki Esparbé), whom Bruno dubs “The Hippie”. A chase ensues, and two of the culprits destroy a makeshift stage for a political event after avoiding Bruno, who’s standing in the middle of the street.

Meanwhile a young girl named Yolanda (Sara Sálamo) is helping her father pull out what she thinks are contraband cigarettes from his rowboat. What she doesn’t know is that under the Winston cartons are bricks of hash. Yes, the drug trade has come to Costa del Sol, and the disco’s owner — and a close friend of Yolana’s dad — “Uncle” Reyes (Jorge Usón) is involved. But before Reyes’ connection can get the shipment, Yolanda’s dad is robbed. Reyes’ guys are so pissed that they stab Yolanda’s uncle to death.

Bruno, who has a hard time believing the Hippie’s insistence that the drug trade has come to the coast, has had an up and down career. He’s punched superiors but also won a medal for heroism in saving a group of children. He’s new to the district and it’s basically his last chance. As the four cops follow the winding road and connections, which start with Dandy picking up shipments of hash in Morocco, we learn just how connected Reyes is, how Yolanda and Bruno connect after she gets a job at the disco, and what secrets Bruno is keeping. When the four of them score a huge hash bust, they form Costa del Sol’s new drug squad.

Our Take: We have to give creators Pablo Barrera, Fernando Bassi and Juanjo García, credit: They’ve set up Drug Squad: Costa del Sol as a swaggering tribute to ’70s action TV shows and movies, with a heavy disco soundtrack, car chases and quippy cops, people sliding across hoods, and all sorts of mustaches, and other machismo on display. The opening credits are such a peon to ’70s cop dramas that they look similar to the video for the Beastie Boys’ hit “Sabotage”, which was most definitely a parody of those kinds of intros.

So we initially got into the first episode because of that style and swagger. But then the convoluted, super-tangled story started unfolding, and we got bored. The creators and their writers roll out so many characters on both sides of the law, it’s extremely hard to keep track of who is working for who, who is related to who, and how each person is involved in this relatively new drug trade. We’re not even sure who the two people who stole the stash that Yolanda’s father brought ashore actually work for, and we don’t think that question even comes close to being answered by the end of the first episode.

The performances are all great, but while we find out a bit about Bruno and “The Hippie,” we don’t really get a sense of who Terrón and Leo are and what they’re about. Sure, Leo is a snappy dresser and is good with the ladies, but that’s all we know. And Terrón gets even less development. All we know about Reyes and his wife Maria Elena (Cayetana Cabezas) is that they’re both greedy. Yolanda has some initial depth, but it’s mostly that she’s determined to make it on her own, and she’ll stop at nothing to get revenge on her father’s killers.

This is what happens when you have to service such a large cast; every character starts as a series of cliches until further episodes get a chance to explore them some more. But that also makes for not particularly compelling television, and when your episodes clock in at over an hour each, that can make even the most action-and-quip-filled episodes drag.

Sex and Skin: Besides Leo’s car sex, we see Yolanda get attacked by a thug, but not before she notices something about him that would connect him to her dad’s murder.

Parting Shot: We see one of Bruno’s big secrets as we go back to him lying on the ground with a stomach wound. In voice over, he says the word “Lies” repeatedly, lamenting who he’s lied to over the years.

Sleeper Star: We’re introduced to Bruno’s young sister Vicky, played by Olivia Delcán. It seems that they don’t talk much, but he still disapproves of her antics, filled with drugs and underage sex. She was a fun diversion and we’ll surely see more of her later on.

Most Pilot-y Line: When “The Hippie” tells Bruno that he thinks hash is being dealt in town, Bruno’s doubtful response is kind of cheesy: “What is this, The French Connection? Drug trafficking. Come on, man.”

Our Call: SKIP IT. As much as we like the ’70s vibe in Drug Squad: Costa del Sol, we were so confused and bored by the end of the first episode that we didn’t think it was worth spending another 12-plus hours on the rest of the first season.

Your Call:

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, FastCompany.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

StreamDrug Squad: Costa del SolOn Netflix