Memento Mori is a six-part series about the hunt for a serial killer in the Spanish city of Valladolid. It’s perfect viewing if you want a dark, melancholy mystery in your life right about now. Airing on Channel 4 in the UK on Sunday 11 May, it will also be available to stream as a box set on Walter Presents from Friday 9 May.
What’s immediately striking about Memento Mori is the Fincher-like atmosphere, all muted colour palettes and rain-drenched alleys. Yes, this is Spain, but the gloomy streets, rising tension and unflinching murder scenes lend it a Nordic noir air, like a Scandi take on Se7en.
A woman’s body washes up under a bridge with her eyelids cut off, and a scroll of poetry shoved into her mouth. The detective who catches the case, two weeks from his transfer to Madrid, is Inspector Ramiro Sancho, played by Francisco Ortiz. Because the crime scene is so unusual, he recruits a psycholinguist, Martina (Manuela Vellés), and a professor of criminal psychology, Armando ‘Carapocha’ Lopategui (veteran actor Juan Echanove), a man convinced that killers like this will never stop, and who also has a personal connection to the case.
The killer they’re hunting is suave narcissist Augusto Ledesma. No spoilers here – this show is less of a whodunnit and more of a howcatchem because the story is partly told from the killer’s point of view. We follow him on the prowl and witness his troubled childhood in flashbacks. It’s a taut, almost Hitchcockian approach, with Augusto crossing paths with the police as he hides in plain sight, and we, the viewers at home, cringing with anticipation as he approaches his prey.
The role of the killer is played by Spanish heartthrob Yon González, and there’s a nod to the American Psycho character Patrick Bateman in his slick appearance and violent fantasy life. He exercises stoically, tries to be charming in nightclubs (daydreaming about murder when rebuffed), and has the word ‘metamorphosis’ scarred into the skin of his back. In his spare time, Augusto is tracking down an old woman with one leg – one of several mysteries about him that slowly reveal themselves.
The villain captivates you as much as repulses you. At the end of the first episode, we see how he commits the initial murder. There is (perhaps unintended) American Psycho-style dark comedy as he pulls on his gloves and creeps up, cartoonishly, behind the victim. But the death itself is raw, physical, perverse. The camera doesn’t waver as he strangles and mutilates the young woman.
Meanwhile, detective Sancho is understated and taciturn. “You’re very strange,” his boss outright tells him during one encounter. Juggling his mother’s dementia and a frustratingly incompetent team, Sancho finds himself drawn to Martina, the psycholinguist. His attempts at romance are perfectly paced and give our hero a chance to show his cultured side as well as his macho crime-buster chops.
The atmosphere is claustrophobic, brooding and melancholic. Valladolid is a medieval city with a historic old quarter and a network of churches and plazas. It’s the city where Christopher Columbus died. You wouldn’t know this from the way the camera follows Sancho and Augusto. The city of Memento Mori is one of smoky offices, grey underpasses and graffiti-splattered tenement blocks. There’s a cool lens on everything and a reliance on close-up filming.
The show’s pace keeps you hooked, making for an unusual and unpredictable drama. There’s no denying the tense build-up, murky atmosphere, and odd way you’re made to root for both the detective and the villain, both very driven in their own ways.
The series is based on the first instalment of a novel trilogy by César Pérez Gellida, not yet available in English, and was initially released on the Spanish version of Amazon Prime Video in late 2023. Reviews at the time criticised the ending for being unsatisfactory, but overall loved the set-up. It’s finally making it to the UK via Walter presents in six one-hour episodes. A second series, based on the next book, has already been green-lit, so there’s plenty more cat-and-mouse intensity to look forward to.
