The Patients of Doctor Garcia (Netflix series, 2023)
The Patients of Doctor Garcia is a Spanish drama series about fighting fascism before the Second World Wat and finding Nazi’s afterwards.
If you’ve liked the recent series Transatlantic, about helping artists and other civilians flee from Vichy-France, there is fair chance that you will enjoy this new show as well.
It is based on the novel Los pacientes del doctor García by the late writer Almudena Grandes, and adapted for the small screen by writer José Luis Martín and director Joan Noguera.
This ten-part series is about the aforementioned Doctor Guillermo Garcia (Javier Rey), who before WWII is active as a medic in the Spanish Civil War between the Republicans and the Nationalists.
After the fascists, led by Franco win, Garcia is in urgent need of a new identity, which is provided to him by Manuel Arroyo (Tamar Novas), a Republican diplomat whose life he once saved.
The pair are reunited in 1946, when Arroyo returns to Madrid and asks Garcia to infiltrate a clandestine network, led by Clara Stauffer (Eva Llorach), that helps Nazis settle, first in Spain and then in Latin America.
García obliges and assumes the identity of a Spanish boxer, Adrian Gallardo, who collaborated with the Germans. This war criminal is unaware that his identity is being used to catch Nazis, but when he returns to Madrid the whole escapade turns dangerous and Garcia himself runs the risk of being found out.
It is an interesting set-up, that coupled with the attractive period setting, keeps you guessing, from the first episodes onwards, how everything will turn out.