You know, from the get go, that Wayne and Isabel will develop a mentor-mentee relationship that involves quite a lot of sparring and a degree of mutual respect. And it is this familiarity that makes the show a comfy, binge watch. Instead 'familiar' is a better term to lend to the characters and twists in the series. 'Predictable' would be the wrong word to describe what follows. There's a bit of the rich brat streak in him, seeing as how he is top Mexican lineage, but it's hard to hold that against him because he really wants "to change the world". He's handsome, charming, and genuinely seems like a nice guy.
At the same time, Lalo isn't your cookie-cutter politician. Wayne suspects that Lalo is secretly and metaphorically in bed with Bautista and is pressuring Isabel to literally get in bed with Lalo to expose their alliance, even though he's married now, and she's engaged to her perfectly nice CIA colleague. In fact, he almost gets Isabel killed on her first day on the job itself - the job he got her only because the mayor of the city, Lalo Yzaguirre (José María de Tavira), happens to be her ex-boyfriend. He's rough-around-the-edges, and has a vendetta against the country's top drug dealer Rafael Bautista that seems more personal than professional. However, to her great misfortune, she has Wayne Addison (James Purefoy) - Mr Too-cool-for-the-rulebook - as her boss. You have your typical, overenthusiastic, and idealistic rookie CIA agent Isabel Alfaro (Eréndira Ibarra), who just wants to prove herself. Instead of the lush, open coca fields of Colombia here, we find the characters in the gritty streets of Mexico city, engaging in pitch-black ambushes, or negotiating in low lit offices of the CIA and politicians, or introspecting in their equally poor-lit homes.įirst, the characters and plot points are painstakingly set-up - and they're the type you've met before in crime dramas of the past. The settings are quite different from Narcos too - they're darker, greyer.
It blends the realism of Mexico's drug problems with the leading characters' messy and rather filmy past, complicated love lives and other personal motivations.
Despite the similar elements between them - such as ruthless drug cartels, revered drug lords, corrupt politicos and the relentless US agents hot on their heels - El Candidatotakes the 'crime procedural TV drama' route instead. Fans of Narcos be warned, El Candidato is nothing like the 2016 show revolving around drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, and the American DEA agents on his tail.