If the only man Pablo Escobar feared was a woman named Griselda Blanco (Sofia Vergara), then audiences best buckle up, because Netflix are intent on unleashing hell in this blood-soaked dramatisation of her rise to eminence as a Miami drug baron. Forging a path through dangerous waters as a mother of three and rising up through the ranks to command an army of gun-toting Cubans on her way to notoriety, Griselda walks the line between domestic drama, cold-blooded cocaine thriller, and fearsome Scarface homage.
Created by Carlo Bernard, Ingrid Escajeda, and Doug Miro this marks a decisive departure for Sofia Vergara, who is not only onboard as executive producer spearheading this ruthless rite of passage but embodies Griselda without breaking sweat. From the boys’ club mentality of head honcho Rafa Salazar (Camilo Jimenez Varon), through to Arthuro (Christian Tappan) her strongest advocate, Vergara ensures she feels authentic.
That this series plays out almost entirely in Spanish also says a great deal about the creative choices at play here, since audiences are asked to go all in and really work for any sense of dramatic satisfaction. In a sense, Griselda feels like a B-movie hybrid infused with the understated cool of Brian De Palma’s seminal classic, but also leans into elements of Carlito’s Way as she feels this empire begin to consume her.
With an unrivalled ensemble of supporting players, Griselda cuts a swathe through convention and tells her story without grandstanding or spoon feeding the audience. With no husband, a bodyguard slash love interest in Dario (Alberto Guerra), and rivals such as Papo Mejia (Maximiliano Hernandez) rearing his ugly head to poach territory, it would have been easy to elicit sympathy for this one-woman army. Instead, what plays out is a complex melodrama where the buying and selling of cocaine is almost secondary to anything else, and the relationships between Griselda and those around her is paramount.
Those gratuitous acts of violence involving machetes, decapitated heads, and gangland hits are also minimal, since that gradual journey to power happens through Vergara’s masterful performance, as this mother of three is led by survival instincts before succumbing to ambition. Her move away from morality pays more homage to Scarface than it does any Godfather film, yet there are moments when certain choices make comparisons inevitable. Griselda also gets it right by maintaining that focus on character and illustrating through her actions how the landscape changes and others fall in line.
As each episode passes and that journey gets mapped out in detail, this drug-fuelled family melodrama keeps gaining momentum, but never once lets its audience off the hook. Delivering in the process an intimate family story cut with cocaine and carnage featuring a mother of three who just happened to be America’s first female drug baron.
Griselda is available to stream on Netflix from 25 January.
