The Gardener Review
Director: Miguel Sáez Carral
Date Created: 2025-04-12 00:04
2
The Gardener Review: Directed by Miguel Sáez Carral, El Jardinero is a Spanish romantic thriller that takes a very dark road to love, control and murder. The series has six episodes, each about 45 minutes long. Among the cast are Álvaro Rico, Catalina Sopelana, Cecilia Suárez, Emma Suárez, María Vázquez, Francis Lorenzo, Javier Morgade, Isabel Garrido, Iván Massagué, Esteban Roel and others. It might read at first like another story of gardening, but do not be deceived: This is not a serene nature story. It combines emotional drama and criminal chaos in a manner that makes you curious while also confused.
The story follows a guy named Elmer who works with his mother, China Jurado, at a plant nursery. But they have a dark secret—they also murder people for cash and bury them in the garden! Things begin to change, though, when Elmer falls for a school teacher named Violeta (Katerina García), who ends up being their next target. It gets messy from here — love and family, lies and murder, all commingled.
The Gardener Review
Honestly, I thought of the story in a very different way. I mean, we have watched a lot of crime dramas before, but in Netflix’s The Gardener, the killers run a peaceful garden centre in front of everybody. That was an interesting contrast. Elmer had a very deep emotional bond with his mother as well. It’s about how a parent’s control can destroy someone’s life. China is not only a mom; she’s the boss of all the things, of everyone’s life, even Elmer’s feelings.
One of the things I liked about The Gardener series is that it seems like it’s trying to deal with difficult feelings, especially with Elmer. He’s not just some bloodthirsty killer. He’s someone whose emotions have eroded because of trauma, physical and emotional trauma. But when he encounters Violeta, a schoolteacher in a dead-end village, something internally starts to reflect him. His feelings begin returning, and we catch a glance of who Elmer could’ve been, had he not been raised in a twisted home. That tug of emotion between darkness and love was very fun to watch, actually.
Although I liked certain aspects of the story, I didn’t love the Spanish romantic thriller The Gardener as a whole. There were times when the series seemed to reach too far for shock or “depth.” Some character decisions didn’t feel real or credible. For instance, Violeta’s rapid transition from innocent teacher to willing, loving to a killer was pretty unbelievable. I get that the show wanted to show how trauma and love can make people do weird things, but it could’ve been better written.
The most disturbing aspect of this Spanish series The Gardener, to me, was Elmer’s relationship with China. His mother, China, is manipulative to the core. She fights to pull him back into the dark world they are both inhabiting, even when she witnesses him falling in love and changing. There are times she appears to care about him, but it’s difficult to know whether it’s love or simply her desire to have someone under her control. At certain points during her scenes, I was honestly angry watching her — and maybe that’s an indicator the actress really nailed it. Yet the storyline between them became so toxic that I found myself wanting to fast-forward through the parts with them.
Also Read: North of North Review: Sweet and Sometimes Meaningful Journey of Self-Discovery
And there’s a subplot involving two investigators, Carrera and Torres. They were intended, I think, to infuse the story with some hope of justice, but they mostly just roamed around, falling in love with one another and doing very little of any actual case-solving. Honest to god, their bit was pointless and slowed the story down. The most interesting aspect of them is a bag of bones they find later in the series, which suggests the truth about China and Elmer might get out — and then that’s over.
And about that ending, I had mixed feelings. Without spoiling too much, let’s just say Elmer evolves once more, and not for the better. Violeta wants to save him, but she inadvertently robs him of the last thing that made him a man. It felt like it was unfair and sad, as if all the emotional work that he’d done went away. And then there’s an imploring such that she seems to want to enlist Elmer’s killing skills for her own purposes. That part left me frustrated. It’s as if the show decided to be unpredictable, only to trade away the emotional weight it built in the lead-up.
Summing Up
Overall, it was just an okay watch for me. The Gardener had plenty of promise. It had the potential to be a potent tale about love and trauma and liberation. But somewhere down the line, it got caught up in its own curls and tried too hard to be clever. And the emotional moments were often undercut by weird choices and baffling plot turns. By the end, I couldn’t tell if the characters had evolved or if they’d simply resigned themselves.
The beginning episodes of the show clicked better for me than the ending. The last chunk feels a little rushed and silly, especially when Violeta suddenly becomes this desperate woman who wants to hire a killer. And since Netflix bills it as a limited series, we have no idea if there will be a second season, even though the conclusion set one up.
The Gardener 2025 is now streaming on Netflix.
Also Read: Meet The Khumalos Review: Fun to Watch, But Nothing Special
