The first season of Narcos, an American crime thriller drama web television series produced and created by Chris Brancato, Carlo Bernard, and Doug Miro, follows the story of notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, who became a billionaire through the production and distribution of cocaine, while also focusing on Escobar's interactions with other drug lords, DEA agents, and various opposition entities.
It stars Wagner Moura as Pablo Escobar â a Colombian drug lord and the leader of the MedellÃÂn Cartel, with Boyd Holbrook, Pedro Pascal, Joanna Christie, Maurice Compte, André Mattos, Roberto Urbina, Diego Cataño, Jorge A. Jimenez, Paulina Gaitán, Paulina GarcÃÂa, Stephanie Sigman, Bruno Bichir, Raúl Méndez and Manolo Cardona playing various real life based characters. The season was estimated to cost about $25 million, with $2.5 million per episode.
All 10 episodes of the season became available for streaming on Netflix on August 28, 2015, and were met with generally favorable critical reception. Wagner Moura's portrayal of Pablo Escobar earned him widespread critical acclaim including a Best Actor â Television Series Drama nomination at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards, while the season itself was nominated for Best Television Series â Drama at the ceremony and received , British Academy Television Award for Best International Programme and three Primetime Emmy Award nominations. The series was renewed for a second season, which premiered on September 2, 2016, with 10 episodes.
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The first season received generally favorable reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes a review aggregator surveyed 45 reviews and judged 78% to be positive. The site reads, "Narcos lacks sympathetic characters, but pulls in the viewer with solid acting and a story that's fast-paced enough to distract from its familiar outline." On Metacritic, Season 1 holds a score of 77 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. IGN gave the first season a 7.8 out of 10 score calling it "Good" and reads "It's a true-to-life account, sometimes to a fault, of the rise of Pablo Escobar and the hunt that brought him down laced with stellar performances and tension-filled stand-offs. Its blend of archival footage reminds us that the horrors depicted really happened, but also manage to present an Escobar that is indefensible but frighteningly sympathetic."
The season received generally positive reviews from many media outlets. Writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Tirdad Derakhshani reviewed the season positively, calling it "Intense, enlightening, brilliant, unnerving, and addictive, Narcos is high-concept drama at its finest." The New York Posts, Robert Rorke said, "Catching Escobar then becomes an exciting and suspenseful story arc, and makes Narcos the first cool show of the new season." Joshua Alston of The A.V. Club judged "Narcos is frequently funny and just stylized enough to amplify the entertainment value without minimizing the gravity of the subject matter. ItâÂÂs an eminently bingeable show even as it makes a strong case for moderate consumption." Television critic, Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter also reviewed the series positively saying, "The series begins to find its pacing not long after, and we see the strength of MouraâÂÂs acting, which to his credit never races, in the early going, toward over-the-top menace or the drug-lord cliches we're all used to at this point. Credit also the fact that Padilha brings a documentary feel to Narcos."
Nancy deWolf Smith of The Wall Street Journal wrote, "The omniscient-narrator device works very well for a complex story spanning many years and varied sets of players." Critic Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times said, "ItâÂÂs built on sharp writing and equally sharp acting, as any good series needs to be." The San Francisco Chronicles David Wiegand wrote, "Virtually every performance is equal to the quality of the script, but Moura is especially compelling as he manipulates the seeming incongruities of EscobarâÂÂs character to heighten his aura of unpredictable menace.... Brancato does make one significant misstep by having the entire series heavily narrated by Murphy." Chief TV critic Brian Lowry of Variety also lauded the series saying, "The sparely told project weaves together a taut, gripping narrative, in stark contrast with the flatness of its characters and color scheme. All told, this Gaumont production is the kind of binge-worthy TV addiction that Netflix was born to import."
Some were more critical towards the show including chief television critic Mary McNamara of Los Angeles Times who wrote, "It's a grand if inconsistent experiment that, from the moment it opens with a definition of magic realism, wears its considerable ambitions on its sleeve." New York Daily Newss David Hinckley, moderately reviewed the season and said, "One of the strengths of Narcos is its refusal to paint anyone as purely good or bad." Writing for IndieWire, Liz Shannon Miller said, "An unlikeable character, no matter the circumstances, remains unlikeable, but an unlikeable character trumps a bland blonde man whose position of authority appears to be his only really interesting character trait, no matter how much voice-over he utters." Josh Bell of Las Vegas Weekly quipped, "Mostly the show is a breezy tour through history, sometimes informative but rarely affecting."