Watched on Three Now (the “+” version of Channel 3)
2 seasons – but I’ve only watched 1 (and I think that’s enough for me). 12 episodes.
Rating: 3/5
The Bridge follows two police detectives – one Mexican, one from the U.S. – and their joint effort to capture a serial killer who is operating in both countries when an American judge known for anti-immigration views is found dead on the bridge connecting El Paso, Texas with Juarez Mexico menacing both nations along the Texas- Chihuahua border.
Detective Sonya Cross, of the El Paso Police Department, works with Chihuahua State Police Detective Marco Ruiz, who knows about the slippery politics of Mexican law enforcement.
Ruiz’s whatever-it-takes approach doesn’t sit well with Cross, who has autism spectrum disorder and a by-the-book attitude when it comes to the job. But the two put their differences aside to solve a string of murders on the border, which is already infected with issues that include illegal immigration, drug trafficking, violence and prostitution.
Their investigation is complicated by the corruption and general apathy among the Mexican authorities and the violence of the powerful borderland drug cartels.
The show title refers to the Bridge of the Americas which serves as a border crossing between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, where the series is set.
This series is in a slightly similar vein to “The Bridge” – set on the bridge between Denmark and Sweden, which was really good (but with a similar strain of detectives. There there was “The Tunnel” (a la Chunnel between France and England) which was also very good.
There are SO MANY murders in Mexico that this murder (where parts of 2 women are left in the middle of the bridge) is just one of thousands (apparently) often unknown and unsolved murders that it became a bit tedious. There were also lots of side-plots in this series that strangled (absolutely I intended that pun, just in case you thought it was accidental) the whole premise of figuring out the murder on THE BRIDGE.
So I found it a little long-winded and strained. It would have been clearer and therefore better had there been fewer side-stories to cloud the main premise. The characters in the image below form just one of the many side-stories. They are reporters and he is an alcoholic drug-addict who it eventually turns out was actually indirectly involved in the actual bridge murder. But it took SO long to get there . . . .
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