Movie Review
The Final Problem
9/10
TLDR
The Final Problem is an absolutely delicious Holmesian puzzle box. José Coronado is superb as an old movie Sherlock stranded at a 1959 island hotel off Mallorca with a body and a houseful of suspects. It takes its time, plays fair and saves its best tricks for the very end.
Where to watch: Streaming on Netflix (all four episodes)
The Facts
Synopsis: Years after his fame playing Sherlock Holmes, actor Benjamin Basil sets sail for Mallorca with an old producer friend, hoping for a comeback role. When a storm diverts their ship to a tiny island with a small luxury hotel and a guest turns up dead, Basil and crime novelist Francisco Foxá start investigating.
Director: Félix Viscarret
Stars: José Coronado, María Valverde, Martiño Rivas, Maribel Verdú, Gonzalo de Castro, Cristina Kovani, José Condessa, Pepón Nieto
Rated: TV-14
Running Length: 4 episodes (228 minutes)
The Thoughts
I stumbled onto The Final Problem while scrolling Netflix, and four episodes later, I had to tell somebody about it. This Spanish limited series is an absolutely delicious, gorgeously filmed Holmesian puzzle box of a thriller. It pulls in all the classic elements of a brilliant whodunit, carefully laying out its clues for audiences to piece together. Thirteen people, one storm and a body at a luxury hotel? If you’ve read a single Agatha Christie novel, you think you know where this is going. It may appear to be heading in one direction. But like all good mysteries, it has plenty of tricks up its sleeve until the very end.
The Final Problem Strands a Sherlock in Paradise
Years after his fame playing Sherlock Holmes, Benjamin Basil (José Coronado, The Body) is on the downside of his career. So when he bumps into an old friend at a party, the producer Fonseca (Gonzalo de Castro, Bird Box: Barcelona), the timing is perfect. Fonseca has a rising starlet named Vicky (Cristina Kovani, Mikaela) on his arm as his “friend,” and an offer in his pocket. Join them in Mallorca to meet an American producer, he promises, and there’s a part for Basil in his next film. Basil is packed in no time, but the Mediterranean has other plans. A storm knocks their ship off course to Santa Águeda, a nearly deserted island with nothing on it but a small luxury hotel.
Among the guests waiting out the weather is crime novelist Francisco Foxá (Martiño Rivas, The Boarding School). He’s convinced that after all those years as Sherlock, Basil must be able to make deductions like the great detective. His chance to prove it comes when one of the guests turns up dead. By then, the storm has already cut off any contact with the police in Mallorca. Seruya (Pepón Nieto, Witching and Bitching), a doctor staying at the hotel, is quick to rule it a suicide. Basil and Foxá aren’t buying it, and before long they’re turning the hotel inside out. Basil keeps insisting he’s just an actor, but his curiosity and ability to observe thrust him into the role of informal hotel detective.
Hovering over it all is the hotel’s manager, Mrs. Raquel Ausländer (Maribel Verdú, Pan’s Labyrinth), who has a reputation to protect. Add fellow guest Adela Figueroa (María Valverde, Exodus: Gods and Kings) and a lobby full of glamorous holidaymakers with nowhere to go and let the games begin. It’s a classic setup: everyone’s a suspect, and everyone’s hiding something.
Elementary, My Dear Basil
Holmes fans will catch the wink in the title. Arthur Conan Doyle‘s 1893 story “The Final Problem” sent his detective over Reichenbach Falls with Professor Moriarty, because Doyle had grown tired of the character. Readers were so furious that Doyle brought him back a decade later in “The Adventure of the Empty House.” Basil’s name is a nod to Basil Rathbone, who played Holmes in 14 films. Incidentally, he also inspired The Great Mouse Detective‘s Basil, and his own voice turns up as the real Holmes.
The series adapts the 2023 novel by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, the Spanish author whose The Club Dumas became Roman Polanski‘s The Ninth Gate, starring Johnny Depp. He wrote it as a love letter to Golden Age British whodunits, set on a remote Greek island in 1960. Director Félix Viscarret and writers Alberto Macías, Carlos Molinero and Marisol Farré made one smart change: they moved the story to 1959 Mallorca.
That’s the year Franco’s Spain began opening its economy to the world. Officially neutral in World War II, the country had spent the years since shut out by much of the West. By 1959, Mallorca was on the verge of a tourism boom, with wealthy foreigners just starting to discover its coves. It makes a hotel full of outsiders feel perfectly timed. Christie fans will also remember Mallorca as the place Evil Under the Sun was shot, with Peter Ustinov‘s Poirot holding court at an island resort. Basil is in very good company.
An Actor Playing an Actor Playing Holmes
José Coronado is superb, bringing more than three decades in the business to the role. He’s played good guys, like the dogged inspector in The Body, and bad guys, like the boozy, crooked cop in No Rest for the Wicked. That role won him the Goya, Spain’s answer to the Oscar, for Best Actor. He won another for Víctor Erice‘s Close Your Eyes, as a movie star who vanished in the middle of a shoot. There’s something right about him playing an actor who found success as Holmes, and it fits him like a deerstalker.
Holmes stories love blurring the man and the myth. In Mr. Holmes, Ian McKellen‘s aging detective sits in a movie theater, scoffing at the actor playing him. In Without a Clue, Michael Caine is a bumbling actor hired to pose as Holmes while Ben Kingsley‘s Watson does the real sleuthing. The Final Problem flips both of them around. Basil only ever pretended, and now the actor has to become the detective. Watching Coronado’s old movie sleuth prove he’s the real deal is half the fun.
If Basil slips back into Holmes on the island, he finds parallel characters among the other guests. He has his Watson in the handsome Rivas, his Irene Adler in Valverde, and even a Moriarty…or two. Rivas gives Foxá the giddy energy of a writer who can’t believe he’s working a real case while Verdú brings polish and steel to the hotel’s manager. Every supporting player gets a moment in the spotlight, as a good whodunit should. You have to suspect all of them a little. To do that, you have to know them by more than where they (supposedly) were when the crime was committed.
Mallorca, 1959, and Not a Hair Out of Place
The Mallorca setting is stunning, the 1959 period detail is exquisite, and the entire thing feels tailor-made for mystery fans. Cinematographer Daniel Sosa Segura shoots the island like a vintage travel poster, all sunny terraces, wisteria and sea. At times, the sunlight gets almost too bright, as if it’s trying to pick out whoever brought such darkness to paradise. Inside, the hotel gleams with chandeliers under a stained-glass dome. The costumes are a parade of white linen suits, turbans and cocktail dresses. And good lord, the hats are amazing! Here’s the movie magic. Much of it was shot around Lloret de Mar on the Catalan coast, with Madrid and Toledo filling in, and you’d never know it.
At four episodes, it may feel slow for viewers who favor quick thrills, but this is a story that takes its time. It’s more interested in developing its characters and deepening the mystery, making the solution to the final problem all the more devastating. The whole case runs 228 minutes, nearly four hours and a good chunk longer than Oppenheimer. The upside? You get to watch it in your pajamas.
Clear Your Evening, the Game Is Afoot
Viscarret and his writers play fair, which is the best thing you can say about a whodunit. The clues are there for anyone paying attention, and the reveals land because the show has earned them. Just when you think the case is closed, check the clock. There’s plenty of time left. I’ll admit I braced for the filmmakers to overplay their hand. They don’t. That extra time is where the mystery shows just how many layers it has, and it’s really quite impressive.
A perfectly bingeable series for anyone starving for the next Knives Out film or Hercule Poirot case. If you’ve worn out Glass Onion and Wake Up Dead Man, this is your next fix. Kenneth Branagh‘s Poirot fans, take note. After Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile and A Haunting in Venice, you deserve a fresh case.
So book a room at Santa Águeda tonight, pour yourself something cold and keep one eye on the other guests. The game is afoot, and it’s a beauty.
The Final
José Coronado is superb as an aging actor famous for playing Sherlock Holmes, with Martiño Rivas as his Watson and María Valverde as his Irene Adler. The 1959 Mallorca setting is stunning, the clues play fair, and four episodes give the mystery room to breathe.
9/10
Where to watch: Streaming on Netflix (all four episodes)
Reviewed by Joe Botten
Joe Botten is The MN Movie Man, a Twin Cities film critic writing spoiler-free reviews since 2012. He also writes for Loud and Clear Reviews, a Rotten Tomatoes approved site. Find him on Instagram and Letterboxd.
Looking for something?
Search by actor, movie, director, genre or keyword.
Leave a Reply