Codename: Sintra (2007)

**A pleasant series, with an excellent atmosphere and suspense, but which has several problems with the script and the connection of the various subplots.** Very superficially based on the book *Mystery on Sintra's Road*, written by Eça de Queirós and Ramalho Ortigão, one of the first crime and mystery novels in Portugal, it is a very well done series that has already a few years and did not seem to have a notable success. The series begins with the murder of a politician, coming from a traditional family, and the action focuses mainly on the further investigation. As it turns out, the family already has its share of unsolved crimes, starting with the unclear death of an English officer in the family home in 1870. The most original thing about the whole series is the way it tries to connect the past and the present. The series plays with the idea of a family curse, or a karma that forces the repetition of past events, as if the murder of Manuel Silveira was an indirect consequence of the death, never clarified, of the English officer Rytmel. The police investigation develops at the same time as other characters take care of historical research and the facts of the past, but the truth is that the series fails to connect both things, to establish a direct relationship between these sub-plots, besides the fact that everything happens in the same house and with the same family. So, the so-called curse, or the way in which the past would have influenced the present, do not pass of creative daydreams that pique the public's interest but never really go beyond that. More effective was the creation and modulation of atmosphere, tension and suspense. Despite the series not being particularly effective in surprising us, as a result of excessive predictability, it manages to give us a pleasant story that becomes more palatable when served with the contours of a Gothic, dark, dense and somewhat pessimistic tale. This tense and somber environment is, in fact, where the series scores. It is not usual to see things like that on Portuguese TV. The photography work, filming at night and on misty days, the dark magic of Sintra's woods, all this helped to create and embellish an environment that is almost Victorian. The cast has several Portuguese actors with established credits, and their overall work is quite satisfactory, especially if we consider that it is a television series, short and with a low budget. The actors who deserve the greatest praise are Diana Costa e Silva, Margarida Marinho, Ana Bustorff and Adriano Luz. José Wallenstein and Dinarte Branco are also good additions and did a good job, but their characters evolve in a very obvious way. Fernando Luís has good moments, but his character only serves to resurrect the family's past and connect the plots. Catarina Wallenstein also did what she could with a character who never gets to be more than a spoiled and rebelled girl, who contradicts her parents by doing everything that displeases them. Among the cast there are, however, some actors who, through their own fault or because of the bad material they received, slipped on the banana peel: Bruna di Tullio tries everything, but never meets her character; apart from never really seeming like someone from the 19th century, it's not easy to see what men saw in her character to make them all go crazy about her. Paula Guedes is not bad, but her character is brutally underused, especially considering the amount of things she knows and the eventual internal conflict of someone who could be more torn between moral duty and the loyalty owed to the person she serves. Tobias Monteiro is one-dimensional, Susana Félix has no personality, and Brazilians Giselle Itiê and Daniela Faria are here only because they are attractive enough to be the Latin lovers of the respective plots.