Karl Puschmann: Escobar story definitely stranger than fiction

<i>Narcos</i> shows how the Colombian cocaine cartels formed and rose to prominence. Photo / AP

Late dip into Narcos’ gripping drama shows it’s worth the effort.

Is it ever too late to get into a series? The zeitgeist moves so fast these days that if you're not watching something current, something new, something hot, it can seem like you're wasting your time.

No one's excited to discuss who did and didn't die in Game of Thrones earlier this year, no one can recall the finer details of last season's Louie and the case is closed on True Detective.

Shows come and go so fast now it's damn near impossible to keep up. It's a terrific time for television but the flipside is we're spoilt. Quality viewing experiences now arrive with such frightening regularity that it's easy to get blase about the arrival of another "must watch" show and overlook a really great series before forgetting about it altogether.

This is exactly what happened with me and Narcos. The Netflix-produced show began a couple of months back amid much fanfare and looked exactly like the kind of series I would dig. I can't really say why I didn't immediately watch it.

I just, sort of, didn't.

As Netflix tends to dump an entire season on you all at once its shows can feel like flashes of lightning. They briefly illuminate the media landscape on release and are then never spoken of again. Because episodes aren't drip-fed week by agonising week to sustain any prolonged discussion, the buzz on any of its shows tends to dissipate fairly quickly.

Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, Bloodlines, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Daredevil ... All excellent shows that were huge news for all of three seconds as people either gorged on them, moved on from them or forgot about them.

With Narcos being out for a bit I felt the conversation had moved on. Turns out it hadn't. I kept getting asked if I'd watched the show and then I kept getting asked why not. With no satisfactory answer to that question I did what I should have done a long time ago and clicked play.

Narcos is an action/drama series that charts the rise of the Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar and the two American DEA agents fighting to take him down.

Ambitious in scope, it shows how the Colombian cocaine cartels formed and rose to prominence by exporting their product into the fiending nostrils of 80s America.

In its 10 episodes the show covers a lot of ground. We see the young Escobar work his way up from nothing to become one of the most feared, most violent and - paradoxically - most loved criminals the world has ever seen.

Narcos mainly keeps it real, but is still classed as "historical fiction". It's not a doco so it does occasionally take liberties with the truth to keep its sprawling story cohesive and moving along. The truth certainly isn't bent to spice things up. There's no need. What happened during this period can be splutteringly unbelievable.

But the realism of the show is really hammered home with one simple yet devastatingly powerful trick. Throughout, whenever there's news footage on a background television, newspapers being read or mug shots being handed around, the show uses the true-life footage or real photo.

Even the opening credits feature photos and videos of the real Escobar alongside that of actor Wagner Moura, Escobar's Narcos doppelganger. This one little example of visual flair lends an air of legitimacy to the whole series, and never lets you forget that the outrageous, troubling and disturbing events that unfold in the series - such as kidnappings, nightclub firefights and street bombings - all actually happened to real people.

Narcos is gripping entertainment. It's tense, superbly acted and most definitely stranger than fiction. After the first couple of eps I was thoroughly addicted and the final cliffhanger has left me jonesing for a second season.

If like me you simply haven't got around to watching the show yet, then let me assure you it's not too late.

* What did you think of Narcos? Post your comments below.