In the Mud Review
Director: Alejandro Ciancio, Sebastián Ortega, and Estela Cristiani
Date Created: 2025-08-14 22:49
2.5
In the Mud Review: Directed by Alejandro Ciancio, Sebastián Ortega, and Estela Cristiani, En el barro is Netflix’s latest Argentinian crime drama, starring Ana Garibaldi, Valentina Zenere, Ana Rujas, Rita Cortese, Lorena Vega, Carolina Ramírez, Gerardo Romano, and others. The drama is made up of eight episodes of an hour each. It is a spin-off of El marginal, but whereas that one had a male prison as its setting, this one lands us in the background of a women’s prison, and it promises to have a new twist, though not always delivering on its promise.
In the Mud Review
The series begins with a sensational opening sequence, the prison bus carrying women convicts to La Quebrada under attack. A convict manages to escape, but the rest of them narrowly survive. This might have been the theme of the series, but it gets set aside soon enough. The series then cuts to prison life, where power, money, and influence are the survival tools.
In the Mud series led me to believe that it was going to be yet another prison drama. We have seen so many of them, ranging from hard-boiled thrillers to black comedies, and I did not know if the Argentinian series would be different. And it is, kind of. The shift of pace from the turmoil of men in El Marginal to the women’s prison environment is thrilling at first. The dynamics shift; there is some mistrust, some fleeting camaraderie, and some survival instinct.
I’ll come to the point, Netflix series In the Mud’s greatest and best attribute is the cast. Ana Garibaldi is a character you’d want to support, and Valentina Zenere is attitude-filled and leaves you interested in knowing more about her. The rest of the supporting cast does adequately well, making the prison world feel inhabited.
But that is where my complaint begins: the story is not original. If you’ve watched other prison dramas, ranging from El marginal to Orange is the New Black (without the humour), you’ll notice the battle of power, the changing allegiances, and the constant fight to survive. While alternating between a men’s and a women’s prison might have brought some new elements, the series just keeps recycling the same clichés one has witnessed.
Netflix’s In the Mud doesn’t shy away from detailing the harsh realities of prison life, violence, corruption, exploitation, and all that comes with it, too. There is a great deal of nudity and sex, too, which is maybe realistic but sometimes not needed. There were some that I didn’t even realise were there because they were for shock value and not because they had to be said.
Also Read: Butterfly Review: Gripping Spy Thriller Wrapped in Family Drama and Unforgettable Performances
What the show does is build tension. The prison isn’t a setting; it’s a harsh environment where you need to choose sides in an instant, and even then, backstabbing isn’t more than an arm’s length away. The production design is grimy, cramped, and unpredictable, and it nails it.
Something I enjoyed is that there is space within the show to show who these women were before prison. Flashbacks flash by and show their lives before the crimes, errors, and desperate measures. Some are tough as nails; some clearly are not used to this type of environment. Most of the characters, with all their flaws, are easy to relate to, just because they’re fighting in a world that isn’t working for them.
But I couldn’t help but wonder if the writing ever took the story any further with them; it was never as far as it possibly could be. There was room for the initial connection made with the van attack to be a bigger threat throughout the series, with more emotional payoff. It gets derailed instead in the prison’s everyday politicking.
The first episode achieves the tense atmosphere just right, but the pace begins to slow. As the initial shock value wears off, the rest of the series trudges along, repeating and repeating past confrontations with minimal increased tension. I was always waiting for the twists that would take the story in fresh and exciting directions, but too many of the developments were predictable. Not that it’s ever even remotely dull, there is sufficient tension to hold your interest, but the revolutionary possibilities are never realised.
Argentinian series In the Mud Review: Summing Up
The Argentinian series In the Mud is a good, well-performed show, but it plays too safely within prison drama stereotypes. It begins well, has a good cast, and makes a good-realised world, but does not have a genuinely memorable or original plot. I did not dislike it. There are a few episodes which drew me in, and a few performances which drew me in enough that I wanted to see what would happen next, but it was a show I’d already seen, but in a different prison.
Also Read: Young Millionaires Review: Flashy, Flawed, and Occasionally Fun
