Netflix is the television equivalent of pasta and ready-made pesto: a slightly desperate but acceptable enough stand-by when you’ve got home late, you haven’t time to prepare anything more nutritious and at least it fills the gap without too much pain or fuss.
It is an adamantine rule of television that foreign-language dramas are always superior
La Palma is classic Netflix. You wouldn’t necessarily rave about it to your friends. But if, as I do, you have one of those wives who gets really pissed off if there’s not a programme ready and waiting to be viewed while supper’s still hot and, in a panic, you click on La Palma, you won’t feel at the end of the final episode like your time has been totally wasted.
This is due, in part, to the location. On glimpsing those dramatic volcanic peaks, lush, prehistoric valleys and crystal clear waters complete with pretty orange fish, I had to double check that La Palma really was in the Canary Islands. Not unlike La Gomera (also in the Canaries), it looks more like one of those trip-of-a-lifetime destinations in the South Pacific that you can’t afford than something that’s just a short hop away from Gatwick. I hope the filmmakers got a good discount from the La Palma tourist board.
The only reason they might not have done is that the drama focuses on La Palma’s main drawback: it’s supposedly going to be the starting point for the world’s worst tsunami. This theory is based on modelling (science speak for ‘Ain’t never going to happen, ever’; see also: man-made global warming, foot and mouth, etc.)
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