User reviews

Enjoyed the music, beautiful scenery and most of all, the character of Boxer. I like how everything was wrapped up neatly in the end.

I didn't really know what to expect from White Lines considering all the mixed reviews but the more I actually read some of the reviews the more I thought I'd give it a chance. I'm glad I did because I found it pretty entertaining. It's about a woman named Zoe Walker (Laura Haddock) who leaves her quite life behind to go find her missing brother in Ibiza. There she gets into trouble and finds danger as she investigates her brothers disappearance. Nuno Lopes as Boxer steals the show. He is easily the best thing going in this show. They could actually do a spin-off on his character and it would be successful because so many people like his character. If you're bored and looking for a good thriller then give this a try!

The great thing here was the great performance by Nuno Lopes!

It seemed interesting at the beginning, a murder mistery in Ibiza, a beautiful place with something that felt intriguing. I couldn't stand the protagonist at all, Zoe is probably the dumbest character I've EVER seen in any movie or tv show. It is incredibly stupid the way she changes her mind all the time and how unaware she is about everything. She cannot comprehend anything and gets many other people in big problems. But she thinks that she can handle everything and that she does the right thing. I finished it just for the sake of getting to reveal what happen to Axel (which was a dumb guy who screwed everyone around him, selfish and egocentric guy). I just can't believe how the people in charge of this TV show let the protagonist look so dumb. After the 2nd episode I couldn't see her as a normal person but as a silly empty head girl. It could've bee a good tv show.

The premise of the story is a good one, Sister heads to the white island of Ibiza as her brothers dead body has been discovered 20 years after he went missing. She heads out to try and find out what happened to him.

The locations for filming on the Isle and the beauty of Ibiza shines through on screen in most scenes and is a reason to continue watching.

But what is it, a murder mystery ??? Yeah in a sense, a voyage of self discovery, yeah its that as well, is it a comedy, well there is comedic scenes peppered throughout, Is it a drama about feuding families, tick, is it about the clubbing scene in Ibiza, tick that box, is it a parody, at times yes.

This is its problem it is all over the place following many different side plots and side themes. You barely get a feel for any of these ideas or stories as many never go deep enough.

The soundtrack is a mish mash of old and new but nothing fits into the period of music at the relevent times not that it's bad music but it never seems to feel right.

The acting is so so, some good some bad some awful, The only really charasmatic performance is for a character called Boxer who makes the show worth watching.

There is lots of nudity and sex of course being set in Ibiza but again it all comes across a little contrived.

If your looking for Nostalgia then it does not capture the time at all, most of it is set in the present day anyway with occasional flashbacks.

Overall it's not terrible but nothing special or great either. The main reason I continued to watch was the scenery and the character Boxer by the end I didn't care what the circumstances of her brother's death were.

Not an amazing show, but the character of Boxer by Nuno Lopes is worth every single episode.

I'm Portuguese and so my opinion is a bit biased based on the casting, but it doesn't deserve the one star ratings you see. It ain't a masterpiece but there are characters you care about and it's well shot Just give it a chance.

I didn't really know what to expect from White Lines considering all the mixed reviews but the more I actually read some of the reviews the more I noticed all the low scores were from the same two type of people. The first are the people who rate everything a 1 or 2, click on their reviews and you'll see that 90% of their reviews are negative. Some say they only watched 10mins but based an entire series based off the first 10min of the first show! The others are bots from competing streaming services that rate everything Netflix does low regardless if it's good or bad. You can tell those by the things they say like "Netflix makes another terrible show," even though Netflix has had more Oscar, Golden Globe, Emmy, etc award nominations than any other company on the planet! I do have to say that the first episode wasn't that good and I almost gave up but I stuck with it and glad I did because it got a lot better!

On the whole this was an entertaining experience. It's well acted with interesting (if not sympathetic) characters, has beautiful sets and locations, and a good score. While this is a crime story it is not a "gritty" or film noir styled production. The who-dunnit story is the main thread through-out the series but often that takes a back seat to what I'd classify as family drama. It's almost soap-opera in some scenes. A lot of the show revolves around the evolving relationships between family members and friends as they deal with their actions in the current as well as come to terms their actions in the past. (The show runs in two timelines: the present and the late 90s). There is quite a lot of screen time devoted to family interactions some of which is quite dark. Other themes the show presents are dealing with the transition of youth to middle-age, sexual morality and parenting. If that's not enough there is drug-comedy and a little crime family conflict in there as well. If that seems like a lot, it is but there is around 10 hours of viewing. Some of the situations and characters are quite unbelievable, especially in the drug-comedy sections. All the Romanians in the show are essentially parodies which is at odds with the rest of the characters. There are a few very good performances in this show. Daniel Mays (Marcus) and Nuno Lopes (Boxer) were standouts to me but whole cast was good. The lead Laura Haddock was fine. There is quite a bit of nudity in this show. It didn't seem out of place to me but definitely something to keep in mind if you're looking for something to watch with your parents! (Actually there are a couple of reasons not to watch this with your parents but I won't spoil it further).

Terrible acting, especially by Laura Haddock, probably only trumped by the appalling character development and direction. Halfway through Episode 5 I couldn't take any more and gave up, realising that I couldn't care less who killed Axel Collins!

I really enjoyed this for a pandemic binge. You either love it or hate it. Great scenery and gripping story. Worth watching seasons and highly recommended.

Nothing here is really great. The casting, mediocre. The music, mediocre. The storyline, mediocre. The shots, actually, the shots are really great, Ibiza is an amazing place. Also, the Spanish guy who played Boxer is also really good. My opinion is, it's worthy watching for theses two things. The beginning is not so good, it does not seems to be so interesting. But when you hit ep 4, everything starts to run. How they tell the story is a bit messy. It hits a point where you don't really care what happened to Axel. A lot of things comes before. The interesting part of the story is how the characters are changing from what they were when they were young, for they are becoming now, grown up. It is the kind of story that is not really great but you watch it until the end. So, if you don't have nothing better to watch, you can give it a try, but don't expect too much from the script.

Stupid, stupid, ending! Could have covered it in 5episodes max, 50% good, 50% absolute tripe, painful to watch Zoe a lot of the time, such ridiculous scenes, wanted to throttle her.

Really enjoyed this, despite it starting off a bit cheesy and cliched.

Ignore the one and two star reviews. Those people uploaded so early, they probably only watched one or two episodes and didn't give it a chance.

You have to wait until around episode 4 for the 'who dunnit' part to properly kick into the story.

The scenery is stunning, as you'd expect and the non English actors are incredible.

An addictive bilingual binge. Perfect for 2020 when none of us will be going back to Ibiza :(

White Lines will keep your attention enough to complete your binge. You will feel invested enough to want closure by finding out who killed Alex Collins. But that's where the compulsion ends. To add to the disappointment, the revelation will leave you feeling underwhelmed. Upon the reveal I thought to myself, "Hmmm. That's whose responsible? Really? I guess so, but it really doesn't add up."

Here are a few examples of the flawed character development that mars the series. The fulcrum, Alex, is so incredibly unlikable that you ashamedly feel fine with his murder. Alex's sister suffers from one of the worst cases of white-girl-privilege ever filmed. She expects everyone to drop what they are doing and wallow in her self-pity while she burns everything around her to the ground, including whoever comes to her aid, including her own family. The protagonist abandons her totally innocent and supportive family for goodness sake, but we are supposed to be in her corner? The band of friends that the series follows were remarkably screwed up as kids and yet managed to "develop" into even more screwed up adults. The powerful drug "dealing" family much of the drama centers around is so dysfunctional you almost want the rival family to take them out and take control. It's bad when my favorite characters are two coked-up mutts; and they are underutilized.

But, White Lines pulled enough loyalty out of me to finish 10 episodes about the best of friends who were not loyal to each other.

Not the regular Hollywood stuff & thats why it's so great. Nuno is great! Must see

I came to read some reviews before giving this series a shot. I Saw many comments about Spanish Boxer... Well, he is Portuguese, not Spanish! Nuno Lopes is Portuguese! And so am i! Thank you!

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

SEASON ONE

Zoe (Laura Haddock) travels to Ibiza, after a body is found believed to be her estranged older brother Axel (Tom Rhys Harries.) After being told by the police that they are powerless to investigate as so much time has passed, she hones the policing instincts she learned from her dad, and strikes up a friendship with local hardman Boxer (Nuno Lopes), whilst catching up with Axel's friends, who he headed to the island with twenty years ago, including Marcus (Daniel Mays), Anna (Angela Griffin) and David (Laurence Fox) who have all gone in different directions, as well as Oriol (Juan Diego Botto), a prominent member of two warring families, whose association with Axel may hold the key to the puzzle.

Ibiza is well known as the go to party isle for wild hedonism and banging tunes, but I've always thought it had potential as the backdrop for a seedy crime thriller, or murder mystery. I even remember writing a script of my own many years ago that I never went all the way with, and now it seems I've been beaten to it by Alex Pina, the creator of Netflix's other well received crime drama Money Heist. It's more fitting, I suppose, to have a Spanish writer more familiar with the scene, and more able to give an accurate account of that world on the island. He seems to have crafted a fairly real recreation of the scene twenty years ago (not that I had personal experience.) But it's not without problems.

The set up is quite well thought out, but the trouble is how tonally unsure it feels. At times it feels like it can't decide whether it wants to be a hard edged, pull no punches murder mystery, or going for a more light hearted, wise cracking feel, worst in the opening episodes which set the mood for the rest of it. What comedy there is comes off feeling uneven, awkwardly inserted into the script. It certainly boasts an all star cast, including Haddock, who is adequate, but doesn't really have the gravitas to carry the whole thing, and Mays, whose comic relief role doesn't really work and grates on the nerves after a while.

That said, it does feature an impressive retro Ibiza soundtrack, that affianadoes from that period will love, and the mystery aspect of the show is intriguing, and will keep you hooked, even if the end revelation is a bit far fetched (not to mention Zoe's transformation from meek library girl into adept hand at navigating the criminal underworld. ) ***

White Lines isn't perfect. While the delivery can occasionally feel a little cliched and the story is slow to get into its stride, it also has a carefully crafted plot, strong character development and worthy performances.

Out of these, character development stands out. In the very first episode, we see Andreu Calafat making a comparison between the polarised characters we see in movies, easily branded as good or bad, to real life, where this distinction is often more obscure.

Although this isn't the first time a story has tried to capitalise on this idea, White Lines does make good of its promise in a way that many have failed to. Across the series, characters are seen for both their virtues and their faults, humanising them, making them more relatable and, importantly, making you care about what happens. It is also used to play with your perception of characters over time, with new information changing your understanding of a character's actions, motivations and nature. In the setting of a murder mystery, this is a powerful tool.

While many of the show's criticisms are valid, White Lines also does many things very well.

Toward the end. Story was well told but highly unlikely. Boxer carried the series on his back. It about two hours too long but Netflix is not scoring any points for brevity. Why are European films always about drugs? They seem to have a preoccupation with cocaine. Overall though, I liked it and would have liked it even more if it would have ended with episode 8.

The character Zoe is a hateful person and her acting is very poor. She and her brother spoil what could have been a great view, but whoever cast them should be embarrassed. The Spanish actors show a class above the British and I'm British. No second season for this lame duck.

This show hit Netflix on Friday and I have spent the last few days watching White Lines and here is my review for the first and only so far season of the show. The premise is 20 years ago an English young man was killed in Ibiza, when his body resurfaces his sister goes on a hunt in Ibiza to find the killer.

Main Character Laura Haddock plays Zoe are main character on this show and I thought she did a really good job, the issues people have is that she isn't the most likeable character and I get that but this is a story about her finding out who she is meant to be. It is not about being likeable but you care about her story and you see how this one event really shaped her life, it feels real and even though things don't always feel real on this show I felt like her arc and character was one of those things I could get emotionally invested in.

Supporting Characters There are plenty of supporting characters on this show but I will only talk about the main ones starting with possibly my favourite character on this show called Boxer played by Nuno Lopes. He was so cool and charming on the show, he also has an emotional arc that you can do care about and seeing his chemistry with Haddock is one of the best part of the shows and he comes across as the coolest character on the show for sure. I recently watched Daniel Mays in Code 404 and he is on this show and I thought he was better on this show, his character arc is especially great in the first few episodes of the season and you see again just how that one event 20 years ago really screwed him up. His arc ends well too and he has a great season long story on the show. You have a powerful family involved and I thought they were all pretty interesting characters, especially the character of Oriol who was really interesting for me and has plenty of depth to his performance.

Story Judging by the premise of the show you would think this is a simple murder investigation plot and that is a huge part of the show and is done really well but there is just much more to it. This is a story about how every character is affected by this person's death and it is fascinating seeing how they are all dealing with it, especially Zoe who goes through plenty in the season. Also there are plenty of flashback scenes involving the incident that happened 20 years ago and they give you a better insight into the characters and there motivations even though I think we could have done with a few less of them as they become a bit repetitive at times. Though I did have a little issue with the story, there are a few less interesting story arcs that take up too much time and play into the more genric ideas such as at least a few love triangles and of course there is a gang war between two families because of course there is.

Script The script is really good, the drama is handled really well, leading to some uncomfortable scenes between the characters because they are so dramatic. It shows the strength of the performers and really does a great job with them, the humour also worked for me when it was used and helped make this show more interesting.

Style This show is heavily set in Ibiza and it is a reall good setting for the show, it makes the show feel pretty unique and exciting, it even feels like the location is a character on this show as it affects so much on the show and it makes the world feel more alive. This show has some very adult themes that not many shows would go with but it feels appropriate and adds to the show as a whole.

Overall Overall, this show has been getting mixed reviews but I must say I was pretty fixated on this show and loved watching it. If you are a fan of crime shows with in depth character study then this is a show for you and for me a must watch.

Rating - 9/10.

White Lines is a terrible show about the murder of an intellectually impaired hedonist with Ibiza's most punchable face.

If you're eager to find out what it sounds like when idiots engage in pseudo-philosophical monologues and dialogues about self-actualization over 10 episodes, then this is for you.