The Final Problem

 

tags: murder mystery, Netflix, Spanish

4 less than an hour episodes

⭐⭐⭐⭐

An isolated hotel. A mysterious death. Thirteen guests under suspicion. And only one person capable of solving the enigma. The game is afoot!

The Final Problem is the period mystery thriller starring Jose Coronado, María Valverde, Martiño Rivas and Maribel Verdú, based on the novel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Premieres September 25, only on Netflix. Spring, 1959.

A storm cuts off a small island near Mallorca. At the hotel where the guests take shelter, Elisa Mander, a quiet English tourist, is found dead. What looks like a suicide soon turns out to be something far more disturbing: a murder. Basil (Jose Coronado), a retired actor who once played Sherlock Holmes on the big screen, is drawn — almost against his will — into unravelling what happened. Alongside Adela Figueroa (María Valverde) and Foxá (Martiño Rivas), he searches the halls of the luxurious hotel for answers, testing the composure of the hotel's manager, Mrs. Ausländer (Maribel Verdú).

In a place no one can leave and no one can reach, every guest and every member of staff becomes a suspect in a crime that grows more complex by the minute.

An actor who played Sherlock Holmes was invited by a producer to an island in Mallorca to discuss possible future projects. When a guest was murdered, originally ruled as suicide, the actor Benjamin Basil started to investigate just like his role as Sherlock. He keeps saying he's just an actor but he can't help himself when 2 more guests were murdered. 

The mystery is good and has a different angle than other Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie mysteries. It has a little bit of similarity to And Then There Were None. I guessed correctly the murderer but not the twist and the reference to a famous Sherlock Holmes adversay.

Highly recommended.

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I recognize the actor Martino Rivas playing the young novelist Foxa who acts as Benjamin Basil's Dr. Watson. I saw him in the 2007 Spanish telenovela El Internado with the young Ana de Armas, Blanca Suarez, and my idol, Yon Gonzalez.