There is something almost reassuringly old-fashioned about The Final Problem. In an age when murder mysteries increasingly arrive wrapped in psychological trauma, unreliable narrators and elaborate narrative gymnastics, this Spanish Netflix series is content to do things the old-fashioned way: strand a collection of suspicious people in an isolated location, introduce a dead body, scatter clues around the room and let everyone look guilty.
Based on Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s 2023 novel of the same name, the story is set in 1959. The four-part series strands 13 people on a small island near Mallorca after a violent storm cuts them off from the outside world. When an English tourist, Elisa Mander, is found dead at their hotel, what initially appears to be suicide begins to look like murder. Enter Benjamin Basil, a retired actor who once became famous playing Sherlock Holmes. With the police unable to reach the island, Basil finds himself reluctantly stepping into the role he once performed for the camera.
The premise immediately gives the series an Agatha Christie air. There is the secluded hotel, the closed circle of suspects, the carefully arranged social hierarchies and the delicious possibility that almost everyone has something to hide. The series understands the particular pleasure of the classic whodunit: not simply asking who committed the murder, but inviting us to distrust everyone in the room.
Basil isn’t Holmes; he merely played him. Yet years of inhabiting the great detective have apparently left their residue. And José Coronado is the reason the character works as well as it does. As Benjamin Basil, Coronado carries virtually the entire series on his able shoulders. He gives Basil the slightly rumpled melancholy of an actor whose glory days are behind him, but he never turns him into a pathetic has-been. There is pride beneath the weariness, and vanity beneath the vulnerability. There is a slightly superior air about Basil, a sense that he is forever half a step ahead of everyone else in the room. But Coronado keeps that quality from becoming irritating by allowing vulnerability to seep through the performance.
But the series is not without its shortcomings. Its greatest strength—its devotion to the traditional whodunit—can also become its limitation. The pacing is deliberate, and at times glacial. Some of the supporting characters remain more like pieces on a chessboard than fully developed personalities, while certain revelations arrive rather late in the game. Still, there is something refreshing about a mystery that belongs to that increasingly rare category of television that can be enjoyed simply for the pleasure of watching clever people in beautiful surroundings accuse one another of murder.
It is not a relentlessly tense thriller, nor does every twist land with equal force. But it is stylish, gently witty and knowingly steeped in the traditions of detective fiction. And at its centre is Coronado, giving Basil precisely the mixture the role requires: vulnerability with vanity, intelligence with theatricality, and just enough superiority to make you wonder whether you should trust him.