After the icy cold of Scandinavia and Poland, City of Shadows felt like stepping into another temperature completely.
This is Spanish crime with speed. It does not move slowly through snow, silence and frozen forests. It moves through Barcelona with sunlight on the buildings, heat in the streets and that sharp Mediterranean brightness that makes everything look alive, even when the story itself is dark.
And I liked that.
Crime dramas do not always need grey skies to feel serious. They do not always need cold landscapes, dead trees and people staring into the distance while the wind punishes them. Sometimes murder can happen under blue skies. Sometimes danger walks through beautiful streets. Sometimes the city is glowing and the story is still rotten underneath.
Barcelona gives City of Shadows a completely different energy. The architecture, the colour, the movement of the city — it all makes the series feel fast-tracked and restless. This is not a drama that sits in the dark and waits for you to understand it. It pulls you in quickly, throws the case in your face and keeps moving.
The beauty of Barcelona is not there just to look pretty. It creates a strange contrast. You are looking at one of the most recognisable cities in Europe, full of light, curves, balconies, stone, colour and history — and then crime cuts through it. That contrast works. The city is sunny, but the shadows are still there.
What I enjoyed most was the change of atmosphere. After so many Nordic and Polish dramas, where the cold becomes almost another character, City of Shadows brings warmth without making the crime feel lighter. It removes the ice, but not the tension. It gives you sunlight, but not comfort.
And that is what made it refreshing.
It reminded me that European crime drama does not belong to one mood, one climate or one landscape. It can live in forests, ports, villages, islands, council estates, frozen towns and now, here, under the Barcelona sun.
Not my deepest crime-drama obsession. Not the one I will sit with for weeks. But definitely one that did its job: fast, stylish, Spanish, sunny and dark in all the right places.
WATCH THE TRAILER BELOW
The 6-part Spanish crime thriller miniseries City of Shadows (Ciudad de Sombras) is available to stream exclusively on Netflix UK. [1, 2]