Does 'Narcos' work without Escobar?

No actor may be able to match up to Wagner Moura, but the story has a lot more twists and turns

NARCOS

Warning: Spoilers ahead

When Pablo Escobar walked into the dense Colombian jungles at the end of Season 1, I felt no real enthusiasm for another round of Narcos .

Till then, the show had been weighed down by the enormity of portraying Escobar’s life — more suited to a biopic — within the confines of the crime-drama format. Wagner Moura’s dynamic presence and superlative performance made us invest in the drug lord, but the writing was uneven, the plot unidimensional, and every other character paled in comparison.

Yet, in Season 2, the imminent end of this very beloved character made the show come alive. Escobar’s final days allowed the writers to indulge in a deeper character study. Watching him squabble with his estranged father and having an imaginary conversation with his dead best friend minutes before being gunned down on a rooftop reminded me of

House of Saddam (2008), the HBO mini-series that managed to effortlessly (and impossibly) humanise Saddam Hussein in his last moments.

At the end of Season 2, I desperately wanted more. But is there even a point to Narcos in a post-Escobar world? The answer is a resounding ‘ si ’.

In Season 3, there’s the Cali cartel, a set of villains that may lack Escobar’s showmanship and violent streak, but who are a lot more calculative in their approach to the drug trade. In the very first episode, Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela (Damián Alcázar ) — one of the four ‘Gentlemen of Cali’ — announces that he’s struck a deal with the government: they surrender in six months, while being allowed to retain all their drug earnings and a minimum sentence. That, right there, is an interesting set-up — a cartel wanting to maximise profits before they hang up their boots, and an agency (DEA) that remains hungry as ever to end their reign.

In contrast to Escobar’s ‘outlaw’ approach, the Cali Cartel work within the system. Agent Javier Peña (Pedro Pascal) compares the cartel’s hold over the city of Cali with that of the KGB over Russia. “The Soviet Union, with nice weather,” is how he describes it in a voiceover. Peña makes for a far more reliable narrator than Boyd Holbrook’s drawling Stephen Murphy in the first two seasons. Murphy struggled to come to terms with Escobar’s violence-fuelled reign and a marriage that crumbled under the weight of his professional commitments, all of which was painfully clichéd. Peña, with his Latin American roots and raging-against-the-system bravado, makes for a far more fascinating protagonist. It helps that Pascal is one of the more exciting actors around at the moment, and giving him more screen time works in our favour.

So does giving him a new ally, Jorge Salcedo (Matias Varela), who works as the chief of Cali cartel’s security. Unlike the show’s earlier penchant to paint all characters in a single shade, Salcedo is a refreshingly complex character — working for the cartel, but wishing for a far simpler life with his wife and daughters. His decision to work against his employers from within provides the show with The Departed -like intensity.

The Narcos writers take a while to set Season 3 up, but the final result is well-rounded and satisfying. I’m already looking forward to round four.

This column helps you navigate online (and offline) television, a world of endless options.