Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
When The X-Files debuted 27 years ago, the idea of a series working on two levels — a mystery of the week wrapped in an ongoing mythology — was revolutionary. Writers have been trying to create series like that ever since, with varying success. 30 Coins, a series from HBO Europe, aims to be a religious-themed X-Files-style show, but that also means it has a lot of ground to cover. Does it succeed?
30 COINS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: In Geneva, Switzerland, a man determinedly walks through the city, until he gets to a bank. As soon as he walks in, he starts shooting.
The Gist: After shooting up the bank, and then retrieving a pendant from a safe deposit box, the man gets in a car. A priest takes off an amulet the man is wearing, and he immediately dies. Inside the retrieved pendant is a mysterious coin.
The show’s credits show where the coins come from: Perhaps it was the 30 coins paid to Judas by the Romans after Christ’s crucifixion. We never talk about credit sequences, but this will be relevant later.
In Pedraza, Spain, people at a dairy farm are surrounding a cow, who is about to give birth. Elena (Megan Montaner), the town’s veterinarian, is distracted by a stuck door as she tries to turn the calf around. When she comes back from the door and completes the birth, what’s in her arms isn’t a calf, but a human baby.
Paco (Miguel Ángel Silvestre), the town’s new mayor — and also the owner of the town’s meatpacking plant — is summoned to the dairy farm. He tells everyone who witnessed the birth to not tell a soul, else the word will get out on social media. “We don’t want to look like hicks,” he tells them. The farmer and his wife take the baby to care for it, and instead of the police or social services, Paco suggests that he and Elena talk to the local priest, Father Vergara (Eduard Fernández) for help and advice.
The padre tells Paco and Elena that someone must have switched the baby for the calf at some point, when Elena and the people filming the birth were distracted. Father Vergara has his own history, which is why Paco’s wife Merche (Macarena Gómez) doesn’t trust him. He apparently used to perform exorcisms, though he tells Elena that he just provides a service for parents of troubled young people; in one of his previous stops, a young man died of cardiac arrest while being exorcised by Father Vergara, pushing a coin through his skin. It’s one of the reasons why Vergara has been exiled to this small town.
When Antonio (Javier Bódalo), the town eccentric, threatens to drop the baby off the church’s bell tower, but then jumps himself after Elena convinces him to give the baby to her. He survives, but he tells the padre that his sins will be uncovered eventually. On Antonio is a coin that the padre says is “just a piece of metal.”
Meanwhile, Elena goes to the farmers’ house — the farmer’s wife Carmen (Carmen Machi) feels this baby is a blessing from God after her own toddler drowned years ago — and notices that the “baby” is now walking and almost as tall as his mother. When she goes back to tell Paco, the mayor thinks she is starting to see things. But he reluctantly goes with her in the middle of the night to investigate, and Carmen is certainly not acting like herself.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? 30 Coins is one of those “strange things going on in small town” shows that feels like a cross between something like Convergence, Messiah and The X-Files.
Our Take: What we wrote in the Gist section above doesn’t even come close to explaining what happened in the 77-minute first episode of 30 Coins (original title: 30 Monedas), created, directed and co-written by Álex de la Iglesia. There is a mayor who’s more concerned with his social media standing than possessed monsters marauding his town; a veterinarian who becomes more of an investigator than an animal doctor; a troubled priest who has a more pragmatic view of things like exorcism than even his parishioners do; and the constantly-suspicious mayor’s wife, who may know more than she lets on.
It’s a lot, and while we were watching the first episode of 30 Coins, we weren’t sure if what we were watching was a complete story as part of anthology or if this is going to be one of those shows where a “mystery of the week” is wrapped up in an overall mythology that will carry through the season. By the end of the episode, we’re more convinced that it’s the latter. But we’re not sure if that’s the right strategy for the series.
De la Iglesia and his co-writer, Jorge Guerricaechevarría, have tried to infuse mystery and a little bit of humor into their horror story, but that also creates tonal shifts that aren’t always smooth. One moment, Elena is freaking out to the priest about the strange baby she saw at the farmers’ house, and the next Paco is complaining about his Twitter mentions.
While we get that de la Iglesia is trying to go for an X-Files vibe, where there’s darkness and gloom 95% of the time, with the other 5% trying to lighten that gloom, the light parts just felt out of place here. The first episode was action-packed, to be sure, and didn’t necessarily lag all that much, but it did feel like it was grinding away a bit towards a conclusion that it could have gotten to about 15 minutes earlier.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: After an attack at the church, Father Vergara doesn’t believe that Elena saw a monster, who was after the coin. But when he asks for the coin, she says, “Why bother? It’s just a piece of metal.” As she walks out, Vergara sits, puts his head in his hand, then looks up with a look of a man who desperately wants that coin back.
Sleeper Star: Even though she’s one of the show’s stars, Montaner’s character Elena is what will keep us watching. She’s curious, strong, and determined to get to the bottom of what’s going on. She doesn’t seem like a person who has visions, so when Paco and Vergara gaslight her, her anger is palpable.
Most Pilot-y Line: Not sure how Anthony was still alive after he fell from the bell tower and hit a van. Also not sure how Carmen survived some of what she went through in the episode.
Our Call: STREAM IT. There’s enough going on during 30 Coins to keep a viewer interested. But at times, there’s too much going on, and it doesn’t give any time to explore the relatively small main cast and what their characters’ motivations are.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
