When I began watching Time Flies (El tiempo de las moscas) on Netflix, I was prepared for a fairly standard crime drama with a redemption arc and a few tense turns. What I encountered instead was something more measured and quietly confident: a character-driven series that uses crime as context rather than spectacle, and friendship as its true narrative engine. The show is less interested in shock than in consequence, and that choice defines both its strengths and its occasional frustrations.
At its most basic level, the story revolves around Inés and Manca, two women who meet in prison and reconnect on the outside with a modest plan in mind. They start a fumigation business, driving from job to job, spraying insects out of kitchens, warehouses, and half-abandoned buildings. It is work that places them in constant contact with other people’s private spaces, and that detail matters. The series uses these encounters to quietly sketch a social landscape shaped by class, neglect, and unease, without ever turning the women into symbols or case studies. They are workers first, survivors second, and former inmates always, even when no one says it out loud.
Carla Peterson’s performance as Inés carries much of the emotional weight. Inés is newly released after a long sentence, and the show resists the urge to frame her return to society as either triumphant or tragic. Instead, it is awkward, tentative, and often uncomfortable. She does not know how to occupy space anymore, especially in relation to her daughter, whose life continued without her. Peterson plays these moments with restraint. Inés is guarded but not cold, fragile without being passive. You feel how much effort it takes her to make ordinary decisions, and how easily that effort collapses under pressure.
Nancy Dupláa’s Manca provides a contrasting rhythm. She is more outwardly pragmatic, quicker with humor, and seemingly better adapted to life after prison. But the show smartly avoids turning her into the “strong one.” Her health issues and financial stress shape her choices in ways that feel grounded rather than melodramatic. The friendship between Inés and Manca is the series’s emotional core, and it is written with care. They are loyal to each other, but not idealized. Resentment, fear, and selfishness surface naturally, especially when the stakes rise.
What surprised me most in the early episodes was the tone. The series opens with a light touch, finding humor in small mishaps, uncomfortable conversations, and the strange intimacy of their work. This levity never turns cartoonish, but it does make the first stretch of episodes feel almost relaxed. For some viewers, that may read as slow. For me, it felt intentional, a way of letting the audience settle into the women’s daily reality before introducing larger threats.
Those threats arrive gradually, most notably through a wealthy client whose interest in Inés carries an unsettling edge. From this point on, the show leans more firmly into crime drama territory, though it never abandons its character-first approach. The tension comes less from action and more from anticipation, from watching how old patterns of manipulation and desperation begin to resurface. The series is careful not to suggest that crime is inevitable for people leaving prison, but it is equally honest about how limited options and unequal power can corner them.
Midway through the season, an episode focused on Inés’s past stands out as a high point. Rather than delivering exposition mechanically, the episode lets her history unfold through memory, confrontation, and emotional fallout. It deepens our understanding of her crime without asking for easy sympathy. This is where the writing feels most confident, trusting the audience to sit with discomfort and ambiguity.
Direction across the series is steady and unobtrusive, which suits the material. The camera lingers just long enough to let silences speak, and the visual style favors natural light and real locations over polish. Buenos Aires and its outskirts are presented without romanticism. Streets, homes, and workplaces feel used, lived in, sometimes worn down. That texture reinforces the show’s themes without calling attention to itself.
If the series has weaknesses, they lie mostly in pacing and narrative balance. The slow burn of the early episodes will not work for everyone, and even later on, there are moments when the story seems to circle rather than advance. A few secondary characters appear poised for deeper exploration but remain sketched rather than fully developed. This is particularly noticeable when the plot begins to hinge on their actions, and I occasionally wished the writers had committed more time to sharpening their motivations.
Still, these issues never overwhelmed my experience of the show. What Time Flies does well, it does consistently. The dialogue sounds natural. The emotional beats are earned rather than announced. The series treats its protagonists as adults capable of making bad choices for understandable reasons, and that respect goes a long way.
By the final episode, the story reaches a resolution that feels honest, if not perfectly tidy. The show resists the temptation to offer a clean moral lesson or an exaggerated sense of closure. Instead, it ends in a place that acknowledges change without pretending that change solves everything. For a series so concerned with the passage of time and its effects, that felt appropriate.
Looking back on the season as a whole, Time Flies stands out not because it reinvents television storytelling, but because it executes its intentions with clarity and care. It trusts performance over plot twists, atmosphere over spectacle, and character over convenience. That trust mostly pays off. The result is a thoughtful, engaging series that rewards patience and attention, and one that left me thinking less about what happened than about who these women were when it was over.
Final Score- [8/10]
Reviewed by - Anjali Sharma
Follow @AnjaliS54769166 on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times