I am dreading watching the premiere of Queen of the South tonight. Why? Because it cannot possibly be as good as La Reina del Sur and nobody can take the place of Kate del Castillo as Teresa Mendoza, the fictional heroine of the novel, La Reina del Sur.
Added: I was right to dread it. It’s absolutely awful. And a sacrilege. First, the actress playing Teresa Mendoza is nowhere near as self-confident or charismatic as Kate del Castillo. Second, it doesn’t follow the plot of the novel from which it’s taken. It takes the characters’ names but then invents a plot that descends into stereotypes in the first five minutes. For example, Teresa Mendoza would never consume drugs. This show has her snorting white powder in the first scene. It also has her dead in the first scene, as if the rest will be a flashback. The Teresa Mendoza of La Reina del Sur doesn’t die — she goes off into the sunset, with the help of the DEA and to the consternation of authorities in Spain, pregnant and alone but in a gorgeous house on the ocean somewhere in a beautiful part of the world. Continue reading