Fancy a melodramatic Spanish police drama with a brooding, action hero of a hunk as protagonist, set against the background of a corrupt and racist small town in Southern Spain, with a few unbelievable plot twists thrown in for good measure? Then Mar de Plástico (Plastic Sea) could be for you. Contains SPOILERS.

Admittedly, the deciding factor for me in watching Mar de Plástico (so named after the sea of plastic greenhouses that dot the countryside in this part of Spain where the story is set) was that it starred Rodolfo Sancho, he of The Ministry of Time fame. In fact, Sancho’s untimely disappearance half way through season 2 of that fab series was due to the fact he was too busy playing a brooding cop in this one.

And as in The Ministry of Time, Sancho puts his brooding good looks to excellent use as Sergeant Héctor Aguirre who is new in town and about to head up the local police squad (Guardia Civil), just as the mayor’s daughter is brutally murdered. The producers are obviously aware of Sancho’s appeal as there are quite a few shots throughout the series of Hector in brooding mood with his top off. (It’s not a complaint, just an observation).

And if anything, Sancho is even more intense as Hector than he was as Julian in The Ministry of Time, and that’s no mean feat. Firstly, Hector is traumatised from his time fighting in Afghanistan where his best friend Pablo (Miquel Fernández) was killed in front of him and just to complicate matters further, he is also torn with guilt and longing on account of his love for Pablo’s widow Marta (Belén López). It soon becomes clear that a guy with such an impressive track record as his has chosen to work in the backwater of Campoamargo for one reason and one reason only: Marta.

It’s unfortunate then that the love story between Marta and Hector is so annoying. Firstly, Hector’s love for Marta seems so intense that in real life alarm bells would be ringing as you’d suspect after a month or two he’d be reading your emails and texts and refusing to let you out on your own.

As for Marta, I found her character infuriating, and it’s hard to understand why Hector is so enamoured with her. I appreciate that there has to be tension as otherwise it makes for a pretty tedious drama series but their constant getting together and falling out again just became tiresome.

Hector’s other main relationships are with his two colleagues who are helping him track down the murderer, Lola (Nya de la Rubia) and Salva (Lucho Fernández). Lola is the more interesting character of the two; of Gypsy stock, she has now become an outcast in her own community for joining the police and also has to contend with the general prejudice faced by Gypsies within the community at large. But Lola can give as good as she gets, particularly so in an incredibly well-choreographed fight scene she has with a rather scary Serbian gangster in Season 2.

Lola also has a soft spot for Hector which given the other options available in Campoamargo (there aren’t any) is more than understandable. At one point in the second series Lola and Hector look like they are going to do the deed. We see them kiss and head over to the bed and then the next thing we know Hector is lying in bed with his back to Lola and with Lola making a rather swift exit soon afterwards and deciding to call it a day on her feelings for her boss. Frustratingly, we never find out what exactly happened. A couple of times Hector suggests talking about it and Lola always cuts him short. Of course, as a viewer you’re shouting at the screen telling her to let him speak because she might well know what happened but we sure as hell don’t. I can only assume something got missed out in the final edit.

As for the other love stories in the show the main one in season one is between a racist Romeo (Jesús Castro as Lucas) falling for a stunning African woman, Fara (Yaima Ramos). In what seems a blink of an eye, Lucas goes from contemplating burning Fara’s brother alive to risking being spurned by his friends or worse for wanting to marry Fara and willing to have his Nazi tattoo burnt off his skin with a blow torch as proof of his love. It’s one hell of a transformation but both actors play their roles with utter conviction and I suppose it helps that both could easily pass as international supermodels should they wish for a change in their career path.

In season 2 we have a similar Romeo and Juliet scenario with Salva falling for the charms of Sol (Adelaida Polo), a cousin of Lola’s. This storyline is a lot less dramatic than the Lucas and Fara one even if it’s just as unbelievable.

But as for our hero, Sancho doesn’t just have to contend with having to take his top off at opportune moments and be in brooding hero mode: in Mar de Plástico he’s also a man of action. This is made clear right from the start when his first interaction with the townsfolk – a particularly unpleasant group of young racists – is to use his fighting skills against the whole group to stop them bullying an African immigrant.

Later on, Hector proceeds to jump on top of a moving car, a moving boat and in one particular scene that even Evil Kneviel would have found difficult, Hector jumps from a motorbike onto a moving van, and then while holding on for dear life to the side of the van with one arm he manages to stop in his tracks a giant of a Serbian gangster by throttling him despite the fact you’d be hard pushed to throttle this guy even if said Serbian gangster was comatose and tied to a chair in front of you, let alone in a moving vehicle with just one hand but welcome to Mar de Plástico. Saying that, all the action scenes are brilliantly filmed if, at times, they are utterly unbelievable.

As for the storylines, there are some great twists peppered throughout the two series. The opening scene of Season 2 for starters (there’s no way I saw that coming) and the twists in the Afghanistan storyline really do throw you for six. Similarly, when the murderer is revealed at the end of Season 1, it really is the person you’d least expect it to be. However, the murderer twist in Season 2 is just UNBELIEVABLE. This is because the person who is supposed to be the serial killer couldn’t have done the murders. It’s just physically impossible even if the idea is a neat conceit. Think of the murder of Barislav “Boris” Politoff (Oleg Kricunova) at midnight in a different town. How the hell was you know who supposed to have got you know where and back and what’s more without anyone noticing?

That aside, Mar de Plástico does boast some very fine acting. Sancho is always watchable; Federico Aguado is outstanding as Sergio Rueda as is Patrick Criado as Fernando Rueda whose character has one hell of an arc to traverse. As for Florin Opritescu as Vlad Dragech and Darko Peric as Bear, both are impressively scary even when the latter is dressed only in speedos. (An image you are unfortunately unlikely to forget in a hurry). Andrea del Río is also very effective as Pilar Salinas, one of the least likeable characters in the series.

Mind you, with the exception of Hector, Lola and Salva most of the characters depicted in Campoamargo are reprehensible. No wonder inhabitants from that part of Spain were so annoyed by the depiction of this town that the programme was apparently forced to add a disclaimer at the start of each episode to the effect that the town was fictional. Though to be fair to the makers, no single group comes out of it well.

The Spaniards for the most part seem to be racist and corrupt; the police (Guardia Civil) with the notable exception of Héctor, Lola and Salva are corrupt, incompetent or possibly both; the Eastern European women are either victims of sex trafficking or unscrupulous, rapacious young(ish) women in tight outfits and garish jewellery, out for all they can get and their male counterparts are invariably gangsters, not averse to a bit of murder, drug dealing and human trafficking; the gypsies are busy fighting among themselves and refusing to have anything to do with the society around them and while being ruthlessly exploited by the Spanish, the Northern Africans are fighting with their fellow African immigrants, being as racist among each other as the Spaniards are to them.

A big hit in Spain, the producers recorded two different endings for the final ever episode and allowed the viewers to choose which version to end with – either justice or revenge. In the version shown, Hector like many a hero before him (think Shane) rides off into the sunset, albeit in a flash car and sunglasses. If Mar de Plástico proves anything, it’s that Sancho has star power and can carry a TV series with aplomb.

At times Mar de Plástico is silly, unbelievable and melodramatic but it does throw up some interesting issues and the direction and the cinematography are often superb. So if you’re willing to take some of the plot lines with a pinch of salt sit back and enjoy the bumpy ride.

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