The suspect sees off-screen footage from February 23rd

The Movistar+ platform has taken advantage of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Franco's death to premiere the four-part miniseries Anatomy of a MomentBased on the work of Javier Cercas, it's a dissection of the 23-F coup attempt, starting from the moment Tejero bursts into Congress and three men stand firm despite the gunfire: Adolfo Suárez, General Gutiérrez Mellado, and Santiago Carrillo. This is the moment the series highlights as "enigmatic," the one that will unleash everything we see.

The fact that television footage exists, which almost by chance captured that moment, has made the coup a much more solid and tangible reality for the public. If that incursion with theEveryone freeze!"If the features and the deputies ducking under their seats hadn't been recorded, if there hadn't been audiovisual evidence, the coup would surely have become, over the years, a more vague and indistinct event for Spaniards. The series Anatomy of a Moment It is a recreation of the events and at no point incorporates real footage. This imbues the production with a certain documentary ambition. The narrative, therefore, avoids the liberty of jumping between "the real" and "the recreated." It presents its account as almost the absolute truth of the events. A voice-over by an omniscient narrator, with an excessive and intrusive presence, clearly contributes to this. This voice is so prominent that it forces the viewer to wonder where it comes from, who wields such influence over the narrative. It is a voice that transcends its role as a narrative thread. It is a voice that opines, that knows more than the characters themselves, that reads minds, even when its thoughts contradict its actions. It is a voice that even anticipates what will happen later. This voice adopts, when it suits it, an ironic or sarcastic attitude toward the reactions, and dares, from a peculiar subjectivity, to judge and evaluate the actions and decisions in terms that could be discussed in a good history class. The voice-over acts as footnotes, which, moreover, become tediously literary. The adaptation of Cercas's work never quite manages to adapt to the language of television, relying too heavily on the original text. The setting, the visual style with its military undertones, and the performances of Álvaro Morte, Manuel Solo, Eduard Fernández, Miki Esparbé, and the rest of the cast are superb. The story is confined to offices and high-society circles, lacking any social context that might reveal the country and its people, and this is somewhat unsettling. Anatomy of a Moment You'll enjoy it if you're curious about history, as it helps to organize and understand the complexity of the events and, above all, allows you to see the care taken during the Transition from a dictatorial regime that has tainted subsequent decades. However, the excessive dominance of the voice-over seems so intent on establishing a specific and definitive narrative about the Transition, even employing epic language and idealizing the protagonists, that it ultimately becomes quite suspicious.