Angela, the six-part Netflix series, is based on the 2021 thriller Angela Black, written by Harry Williams. The series introduced us to a woman who was a victim of domestic violence and lived with extreme fear and anxiety. Her fears intensified even further when she discovered her husband was trying to kill her. Let's find out what happened in the series and whether the protagonist managed to save her life and expose her abuser's intentions.
At the beginning of the series, we learned of an anonymous complaint against Gonzalo Ochoa, Angela's husband, alleging physical abuse. Gonzalo believed it was Angela who had complained about him and made it clear that she shouldn't have contradicted him. Angela tried to make her husband understand that she had nothing to do with it, but he didn't believe her. Angela thought it was probably her good friend Esther, who was also a lawyer, who had gone to the police, but Esther told her she had nothing to do with it either.
Stars: Verónica Sánchez, Daniel Grao, Jaime Zatarain
Well, Esther's statements were partly true and partly false. Maribel, an elderly woman caring for Angela's mother, had seen marks on Angela's neck and back, and realized from her body language that she had been abused. Maribel came to Esther on her own initiative, and then Esther took the matter forward and used her connections to file an anonymous complaint. Poor Angela was terrified of her husband. It was disheartening to see her condition, but generally in cases of domestic violence, it is almost impossible to prove the other person's guilt.
Furthermore, Gonzalo was an extremely cautious man who liked to keep things under control. He was very cautious in his dealings, and Angela was so afraid of him that it didn't even occur to her to contradict him. Gonzalo was an architect and had to travel to Madrid for work quite frequently. Once, when he was out of town, he sent Angela flowers to make up for the abuse the day before. The man who came to deliver them turned out to be an old acquaintance of Angela's, named Eduardo Silva, alias Edu. Angela didn't recognize him, but he told her that, in his time, he was in love with her. Since Edu gave her the flowers, he had Angela's number. He took a risk and sent Angela a message to invite her out on what could be considered a casual date. Angela, on an impulse, decided to go see him, as she, too, wanted a change of scene.
Edu and Angela met a couple of times and became close friends. But Angela decided to end their little fling, fearing that Gonzalo would find out. But then something strange happened. Edu told Angela that Gonzalo had hired him to kill her, as, after the domestic violence complaint, he had become a bit paranoid. Angela couldn't believe what she was hearing, but Edu made sure to provide her with enough evidence to change her mind. Edu told her that architect Nekane López, whose untimely death had become national news, was murdered by Gonzalo. He told her that he hadn't met Angela before and that the information he had about her had been provided to him by Gonzalo. It took Edu a while, but he managed to convince Angela that her life was in imminent danger. Angela became paranoid and didn't know what to do. It was then that Edu made her understand that she couldn't run away from her husband; she would have to kill him first if she wanted to save her life and those of her daughters.
That was a big decision for Ángela, to have her husband killed, but at that moment, she believed she had no other choice. Edu told her he would kill him for her and that she just had to go along with it. Edu asked Ángela to go to his friend's house with her daughters until he finished the job. He asked Ángela to send a message to Gonzalo to meet her at a specific place so he could go there and do his job. But things didn't go as Ángela had planned, and somehow Gonzalo realized she had taken the children to Edu's friend's house. Ángela realized that Edu had been killed by Gonzalo; she saw his body lying in the backyard of the house. As soon as she saw Gonzalo there, she lost her cool. She took a harpoon out of her car and pointed it at Gonzalo in case he tried to hurt her. But before that happened, the police arrived and arrested Ángela.
Angela was sent to a psychiatric hospital, and the poor woman couldn't understand why she was being kept in custody when the real killer was her husband. It was then that the doctors told Angela that no man named Edu existed in real life, and that her paranoia was just her imagination. They told her that the events she claimed to have experienced came from a fictional novel written by a man named Eduardo Silva. Angela rebelled against the doctors, but realized she was just wasting her energy, since no one would believe her. Angela began to doubt herself, although deep down she knew she couldn't be imagining everything. Esther, her friend, was there for her when she needed her most. Esther took Angela's case and told her to do exactly what the doctors told her if she wanted to be released from the psychiatric hospital. Esther knew that it was very easy for Gonzalo to prove that Angela suffered from schizophrenia, since her mother also suffered from it. The doctors gave Angela the all-clear, and their reports concluded that whatever it was, it had been an isolated incident and that Angela was of sound mind.
Angela was discharged from the hospital, and in the meantime, Gonzalo had obtained a restraining order against her, claiming she was unfit to be with her daughters. Esther advised her to be patient and take it slow and steady until she found a way to get it overturned. Angela would have thought it was all a figment of her imagination if she hadn't seen a scar on his leg. She remembered once burning her leg on the exhaust of Edu's motorcycle. She put the pieces together and realized that if that scar was real, then Edu was too. Angela and Esther did some research and found Edu's social media profile. Edu's real name was Roberto Irigoyen, and he owned a bar called Red Fish. Edu had told Angela that he had agreed to kill her because Gonzalo had promised him £200,000. She said she needed money for her sister Rosa's medical treatment, so she accepted Gonzalo's offer. Angela and Esther discovered that Rosa was actually her partner, not her sister. They tracked down Rosa and discovered that Red Fish had reopened the day Angela was admitted to the hospital. Angela and Esther confronted Edu, alias Roberto, but the man pretended not to know them.
He immediately informed Gonzalo that Angela had found him, and that's when Gonzalo began proactively covering his tracks. Now that Angela and Esther knew Edu existed in real life, they just needed to find evidence linking Gonzalo to Roberto. They managed to follow the money trail, and from it, they learned that Gonzalo had made a payment of £30,000 to a company called Soul Landscape, ostensibly to have his back garden landscaped. They discovered that the company's owner was the husband of Gorka Santos, the planning manager. Angela realized that Gonzalo had bribed the agent to give Roberto the permit/license to reopen and operate his bar. Furthermore, Angela and Esther managed to access the dock's security camera footage, which showed Gonzalo and Roberto on the same boat. Esther believed she had enough evidence to prove that Gonzalo not only abused Angela but also framed her by hiring Roberto Irigoyen.
The trial began, and Angela had great faith in the judiciary and believed that justice would be served. But even after presenting all the evidence, the plaintiffs couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Gonzalo was directly involved in what happened. Maribel went to court and testified about the abuse Angela suffered, but that didn't work either. The problem was that the evidence presented couldn't link Gonzalo directly to what happened. Yes, the judges might have suspected the truth, but they couldn't make a judgment based on their perception. They gave the plaintiff ample opportunities to prove his point, but Gonzalo's lawyer was quite good and always found holes in the plaintiff's narrative. Angela was frustrated beyond measure and didn't know what to do.
Call it fate, but just when the battle seemed lost, Angela remembered something. Her mother had told her a few days earlier that Gonzalo had come to their house unannounced and searched the shed for something. At the time, Angela didn't know if that had actually happened, as her mother suffered from schizophrenia. But after the case was over, she realized what Gonzalo might have been after. She realized Roberto knew things about her that she hadn't even told him. She assumed Gonzalo had stolen her diaries, as he had a habit of writing them daily in his time. She went to her mother's house and realized she was right. It was then that she decided to set a trap for Gonzalo, even though she knew it was a risky decision and that it could backfire. But she wanted custody of her children, and she also wanted to prove to the world that the man she was living with was abusive. She went to see Roberto and told him to do what she asked or his permit would be revoked.
Angela realized that, even after obtaining the permit, Roberto had not complied with the fire safety regulations. Roberto joined the cause and called Gonzalo to tell him that someone had broken into his cafeteria and that he needed Gonzalo to check it out, as he was in the hospital with his partner. Roberto told Gonzalo that he had a digital copy of Angela's journals saved on his computer and was afraid someone might be able to access them. Gonzalo became angry with him, as he had asked him to destroy it. Gonzalo had no choice but to go to the cafeteria and find out what had happened.
In fact, there were no digital copies of the journals, and Angela had only used them as bait. Angela arrived at the cafeteria, opened her laptop, and joined the virtual parent-teacher conferences that her daughters' school had scheduled. Unaware that the camera was on and everyone could see each other, Gonzalo entered the cafeteria and physically assaulted Angela. All the parents and teachers witnessed him mercilessly beating Angela.
Before Gonzalo could realize what had happened, the police arrived on the scene and arrested him. He was stunned and couldn't believe his wife had manipulated him. Gonzalo was an abuser, a manipulator who had ruined Angela's life. That poor woman, through no fault of her own, lived in constant fear. She didn't deserve that life, and she realized that unless she fought back, no one would come to her rescue. At the end of the series, Angela set fire to Roberto's café and destroyed it, not believing he deserved forgiveness for what he had done. The man couldn't even report the incident, as he hadn't followed fire safety regulations.
In Angela's finale, Gonzalo was imprisoned while Angela gained custody of her daughters. She was happy that she had stopped blaming herself for what had happened at the right time and decided to fight an abuser before he got away with it. She realized how insignificant the people around her were, who never understood her plight. She was grateful to have a friend like Esther, who had been by her side through thick and thin.
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