TV adaptation honours Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magic

This first eight-episode season landed on Netflix in mid-December, with a puzzling lack of marketing.

- John Lui

That is a shame because the series deserves more attention, and not only because it is an adaptation of one of the most significant works of world literature, the 1967 novel of the same name by Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Critics have praised the made-in-Colombia production for its fidelity to Marquez's text, and a second season is expected in 2026.

The show opens in the early 1800s in Colombia and follows Jose Arcadio Buendia (played by Marco Antonio Gonzalez Ospina as a young man and later by Diego Vasquez), a hot-headed but charismatic young man in love with his first cousin, the beautiful but superstitious Ursula Iguaran (Susana Morales Canas as a young woman and later by Marleyda Soto).

Ursula subscribes to the folk belief that should they marry, their child will bear the features of an animal. They get married anyway and the sin of incest will be carried through their lineage, manifesting in strange and terrible ways.