Stream It Or Skip It?

In a new psychological thriller from Colombia, a man investigates the layered, very dark past of his new wife after he finds her in a delirious state with very little in the way of memory. What the first episode of the series tries to do is set up just how dark things might get as the series goes along.

DELIRIUM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A girl walks through a thicket of trees. She sees her mother collecting bugs in a jar.

The Gist: Blood trickles down the girl’s leg, meaning she’s having her first period. Her mother tells her to stay away from boys, and “not to tickle down there too much,” because “down there is where the madness gets in,” just like it did with the sister of the girl’s father.

Years later that girl, Augustina Londoño (Estefania Piñeres) is college age, and she sees a literature professor, Fernando Aguilar (Juan Pablo Raba) lead a campus protest. She seems particularly taken with him, and when he approaches her tarot reading table on campus, the two of them connect. She writes him a note, requesting they meet, and puts it in his mailbox.

We flash back a few years, to when Augustina and her older brother Joaco (Jose Julian Gaviria) were in high school. A scholarship student, Fredy Rodriguez (Juan Pablo Urrego) joins Joaco’s class, and while Fredy’s first day as the “poor kid” in a class full of privileged rich kids doesn’t go well, he finds a buddy in Joaco. The first time Fredy, who eventually gets the nickname “El Midas,” comes to Joaco’s house, he sees Augustina and is immediately smitten. There’s just something about her that’s entrancing. Augustina is fascinated with Fredy as well.

Augustina is very forward with Aguilar, and they sleep together soon after they meet up. It’s a whirlwind affair, and eventually Aguilar asks his ex-wife Sofia (Cristina Campuzano) if their teenage sons can meet her. But when that time comes, Augustina stands her up. She’s actually at her father’s funeral; she estranged herself from her family a few years prior, mainly due to the strange activity of her mother Eugenia (Paola Turbay). Jaoco occasionally gives her money from their father, but she generally gives that to people she knows need it more. Also at the funeral, El Midas confronts her about how they split up, leading to a reunion.

However, Aguilar and Augustina eventually get married. One day he goes away with his sons on a trip. When he comes back, she’s not home; he gets a message to come get her at a hotel because there’s a problem; she’s yelling in the background that Aguilar left her. He walks into her room to see her in a very fragile emotional state.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Delirium, written by Verónica Triana and Andrés Burgos and adapted from the novel by Laura Restrepo, has the feeling of psychological thrillers like Fatal Attraction and The Gardener.
Our Take: The idea behind Delirium is that Augustina is going to be in such a delirious state that her memories are affected, including how she got to the hotel where Aguilar found her. It will be up to Aguilar to look into what happened, and that’s going to dig up all sorts of dark stuff about Augustina’s past.

The first episode does a good job of setting up the stakes and giving some hints at what Augustina’s state of mind might be. The time period is somewhat vague, though we guessed that it was the late 1970s and early 1980s, which feels about right. It’s pretty apparent from the flashbacks to Augustina’s teenage years that there was a lack of stability in her family, and that her mother Eugenia had a huge negative influence on her.

There are signs of what might be in store for Augustina when we see her as a kid experiencing her first period. Her mother gives her all sorts of off-kilter advice about how insane she’ll get if she has sex with guys or even masturbates. The bugs her mother collects somehow end up in Augustina’s bed. It feels like Eugenia is a chaos agent in her daughter’s life, and so emotionally abusive Augustina had to separate herself from the family to keep herself relatively sane.

Piñeres is mesmerizing as Augustina. She’s seems to be an open book, both emotionally and physically, but as Aguilar finds out there are layers of darkness in there that even she can’t reach on her own. While it seems that Aguilar is essentially there as a sponge to absorb all of his new wife’s traumas, we hope that more about him is revealed as the series goes along. Same with “El Midas,” aka Fredy. What happened to him and Augustina is part of what is making her emotionally withdraw, and it does seem like the emotional connection between the two of them is the strongest connection Augustina has ever had.

Sex and Skin: Yes, there’s definitely both. The first time Augustina and Aguilar have sex, she insists that her socks stay on because “we’re not there yet.”

Parting Shot: Aguilar walks into the hotel room and sees Augustina sitting on the floor, crying. When he tries to touch her, she swats him away.

Sleeper Star: It looks like Paola Turbay handles Eugenia’s pure evil quite well; as her emotional torture of her daughter is explored more, the cold and calculating way Eugenia accomplishes that will be interesting to watch.

Most Pilot-y Line: The timeline of how Fredy is introduced to Augustina is a little disjointed. We see him on his first day at school, then he comes home disheveled and with bruises on his face; he tries to sew a Lacoste alligator on his shirt. Then he goes to meet Jaoco, which is where he meets Augustina. He’s bruise-free, suggestion that some time has passed, but we’re not sure how much.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Even though the drama in Delirium mostly revolves around one character, that character is very layered and complex. Even if the characters around her are more one-dimensional, we want to see just how Augustina got to the point where she’s in that delirious state.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.