Save for the fact that it’s filmed in Portuguese, Mandrake’s two-season run would have felt right at home with an American audience whose thirst for crime serials seems insatiable. It has many of the same elements of popular anti-hero shows like Dexter and The Shield, and it pushes the envelope of sexual, drug, and violent content right from the start. It doesn’t matter how much you hate subtitles, because the hardboiled investigations of Mandrake, a womanizing, wine-swilling criminal lawyer, transcend the language barrier as he skips from one case to the next acting as the mediator between the rich and seedy sides of Rio de Janeiro. The writing and acting are enough to make fans of the typical HBO viewer, but the lack of a strong overarching plot and a few visual hiccups make it less than a perfect package.
Mandrake doesn’t claim to be a bastion of morality. As the criminal lawyer of a two-man firm, where the other half is a septuagenarian Jewish colleague of his deceased father named Leon Wexler, Mandrake spends every day and every night in the presence of drug dealers, gangsters, petty crooks, dirty cops, strippers, and whores all while attempting to maintain that air of respectability that keeps his high-end clients coming back. It’s a fine line to walk, and the series follows his inevitable occasional slips from one side to the other.
With only 12 episodes, there’s not much time for the series to have developed too much of a deep arc for Mandrake. The mentorship between Wexler and Mandrake starts right from the outset, and it’s the most real relationship the show has to offer. Little snippets of plot start to develop around Mandrake’s collection of other lovers, but none of it ever rises above melodrama or gets too involving (even as a few cases are directly tied to them). Similarly, it would have been nice to see Mandrake’s life spiral out of control – but that kind of progress requires more time than the series had.
DVD Bonus Features
There are none.
"Mandrake: Seasons 1 & 2" is on sale July 26, 2011 and is not rated. Crime, Drama. Directed by Lula Buarque De Hollanda, Claudio Torres. Written by José Henrique Fonseca, Rubem Fonseca. Starring Marcos Palmeira, Luis Carlos Miele.
