HBO Latin’s Capadocia had the potential to be the Spanish-speaking world’s version of Oz, which was an excellent prison drama which ran for six seasons and was HBO’s first ever one-hour length episodic program. Save for one element, Capadocia starts with everything it needs to essentially be equally great. What it lacked was the ambition in making many social levels within the prison atmosphere which Oz had in spades. Beyond that though, many of the elements are the same including the setting, the story, and where it was going. Sadly, the series’ continuation was disjointed and it didn’t receive a second season until three years after its first, and that’s too long a time to draw the original audience back into the world it created.
The series starts off with a bang and doesn’t lack for criss-crossing storylines which converge in the world of Capadocia, an experimental prison set up as the first privatized penal institution in Mexico City. Lorena (Ana de la Reguera) leads the idyllic family life with husband Patrick (Hector Arredondo) and their three children. When a weekend trip with Lorena and the children doubles back home, she stumbles across Patrick having an affair with her best friend who ends up dead after a fight and a tumble down a flight of stairs. Meanwhile, the prison privatization bill, which would essentially turn prison’s into labor centers and was promoted by Federico (Juan Manuel Bernal), falls through after newly elected Governor Santiago Marin (Marco Trevino) turns down the deal on the advice of his ex-wife Teresa (Dolores Heredia), who sees it for what it is: slave labor. Then everything changes. A savage prison riot led by Bambi (Cecilia Suarez – who is fantastic) turns the power structure of the failing all-women prison on its head and makes a very public case for a better equipped facility.
Suddenly Federico’s private prison Capadocia is the best option and Teresa, who was on the verge of moving to Paris with her two children, has the responsibility of overseeing the conditions there to make sure it’s not just a sweatshop with a guaranteed labor force. Unfortunately for Lorena, whose conscience forces her to accept the blame for the reactionary push that sent her husband’s mistress down the stairs, her prison sentence starts on the day of Capadocia’s unveiling and she’s thrown into the violent social sphere that necessitated the new institution’s opening. The season follows her adjustment and trials within the prison as she learns the ropes of prison life, makes allies and enemies, and discovers the survivalist tendencies within her.
Capadocia - Un Lugar Sin Perdon (“A Place Without Forgiveness”) has a stellar cast who go a long way towards making the show’s different storylines intersect in what seems like an effortless fashion. The pilot episode’s riot sequence is superb and it sets the scene beautifully for the inmates as they’re moved to Capadocia where the freedom they once enjoyed suddenly vanishes thanks to the funding which allows for skilled guards, proper surveillance (most of the time), and more strictly regulated housing, as opposed to the more communal cell system they came from.
However, what Capadocia lacks is the depth of social structure which made Oz’s world of inmates impressive and ultimately rewarding (both in characters and content). Capadocia’s world is never so big and instead focuses on a much smaller group leading to a much narrower story. It’s unfortunate really as the series is quite good and worth checking out, especially for fans of Oz, however just be prepared to for the truncated feel and the knowledge that the story is, for the most part, only a single season long (in this case though, that’s still about 13-hours long).
Capadocia layers its loaded narrative with a hefty commentary on the failure of penal systems to recognize the disparities in inmates’ crimes once they’re in the system. It’s not enough to divide inmates between high and low-security facilities, because as Capadocia points out (using Teresa as its mouthpiece): not everyone in prison has sinned equally. All too often this is overlooked and in the case of Capadocia, whose primary objective (as far as investors are concerned) is a return on their hard-spent capital and not the rehabilitation of the prisoners (and the broken system) that Teresa seeks. The series plays her objectives against theirs and it generates a fair amount of drama outside of the prison’s walls.
DVD Bonus Features
Along with (what was initially) an advance look at the second season of Capadocia, the extras in the set include a list of filmographies for the cast, a photo gallery of the season, and a 24-minute series of featurettes which lack subtitle support (so they’re all useless if you don’t speak Spanish). The set would be perfect (from a technical standpoint) had HBO remembered to put in subtitles for these.
"Capadocia - Un Lugar Sin Perdon: Season One" is on sale May 24, 2011 and is not rated. Drama. Directed by Carlos Carrera, Javier Fox Patron, Pedro Pablo Ibarra. Written by Guillermo Rios, Leticia Lopez. Starring Ana De La Reguera, Cecilia Suarez, Dolores Heredia, Hector Arredondo, Juan Manuel Bernal, Marco Trevino.
