I’m gonna mention this on a future recommendations episode but I haven’t finished it yet. Green Frontier is extremely good and I haven’t heard anyone talk about it. It’s basically a hardboiled detective story set in the amazon with a female protagonist and magical realism, using mostly first-time actors.
Just about everything in this show is done just a little differently. Pacing, writing, characterization, what it gives you and what it leaves to speculation (a LOT of which has to do with nuance of performance), where and how it presses for intensity, etc.
I’ve seen very few detective shows/movies that star women, and the ones I have seen are often “this lady is just as tough as the boys in her short shorts,” or simply replaces the hard boiled man detective with a woman and changes nothing about the formula except not giving her a “homme fatale” to contend with.
the nuance with which this show presents a strong but “broken” female character is so much stronger than most stuff I’ve seen, especially in the detective-ing genre. I’ve finished the third episode and she has not punched a single person but you instantly know she’s way more resilient than most of the people around her anyway - her power comes from somewhere else.
And the setting of the amazon is intriguing - you’re on the border between Colombia and Brazil, with indigenous folk living in the jungle having their own jurisdiction and concerns, and hardcore christians whipping themselves - I haven’t seen where it goes, but so far it gives me that culty mystery I’m looking for in something like this. True Detective wishes it could’ve had this as a season, basically.
Maybe it’ll fall apart later, but as of now it’s incredibly solid, and worth a look. It came out in 2019 and is on netflix - I never heard anybody talk about it but it’s definitely my kind of thing.