Airing on Prime Video from March 11, “Operation Black Tide” puts faces and character backstories to one of the most epic of feats in the annals of narco-trafficking.
The four-part Spanish-Portuguese drama-thriller also says much about the ambitions of the U.S. streamer: Its energetic targeting of local markets, and pursuit of tried and tested talent to explore new genres with notable production ambitions. Following, four key pointers to the latest Amazon series from Spain:
Capturing an Epic Narco Feat
Drug sub actioner “Operation Black Tide” is certainly one example. It hews closely to a dramatic real-life event: the detection on Nov. 24, 2019, off the fjord-indented coast of Galicia, North-West Spain, of a flimsy 70-foot fiberglass semi-submersible, fabricated in a clandestine shipyard deep in the Amazon rainforest.
On board were three tons of cocaine, worth an estimated street value of €123 million ($138 million), and three crew members who had piloted the drug sub from Brazil’s Macapá across the Atlantic Ocean to Spain.
