The Movistar+ platform has premiered a magnificent BBC series. It could be considered a more adult and mature version of what Merlí intended. Waiting for the Out (The Life in the Shadow) is based on the memoirs of Andy West. The protagonist is Dan Stewer, a young philosophy professor who leaves university to teach in prison. The decision, which is incomprehensible to his brother, connects with some of his most intimate fears. The son of an abuser and a delinquent, he is one of the few men in the family who has not ended up behind bars. His father, his uncle, and his brother all spent time incarcerated. Dan is the only one who seems to have escaped a cursed inheritance. And despite everything, he resolves to enter prison in a different way. In The Life in the Shadow, the prison drama takes a back seat. The protagonist is, apparently, free. But as the episodes progress, we will question this premise. Dan will converse with the inmates about Descartes or Locke and pose existential questions to them, aiming to stimulate their thinking and reflect on their circumstances. And through his interventions, he will try to understand who his father was and why he behaved the way he did. He will confront his fears, traumas, childhood memories, and unexpressed past conflicts that make him a victim of another type of condemnation, from which he doesn't know how to escape. In this sense, the series is part of the abundant body of fiction where protagonists carry wounds due to their parents.The characters are not at all stereotyped and the dialogues with the inmates are splendid. It is not a basic philosophy Wikipedia of a wise man illustrating illiterates. The more theoretical reflections overlap with the most logical miseries of a prison: the sense of justice, consciousness, guilt, the possibility of changing or becoming a better person. “What makes you be you?”, “Is your self from ten years ago the same as who you are now?” are the first questions he shares with his students and that the viewer can also pose to themselves.Life in the shadow consists of only six chapters and, despite this, you see the characters evolve in a very natural way. In the background, it reflects on masculinity, on how family can determine our destiny or the possibilities we have of breaking with the inertias we have inherited from our parents. It is a series that, once you reach the end, you can start again, because it allows you to read the subtlest details that we had overlooked.Don't miss it, because it's one of the best options this summer, even though it's not, precisely, a very cheerful or bright story. From time to time, however, it gives you a slight smile. The series poses a reflection on freedom, which goes beyond being behind bars or not, and asks us what vital circumstances imprison and limit us, even without us realizing it.