Surviving Escobar: Alias JJ is a Colombian crime drama produced by Asier Aguilar for Caracol Televisión, based on the book Sobreviviendo a Pablo Escobar by Jhon Jairo Velásquez, who was Escobar’s lieutenant and right hand. It premiered in Colombia on February 8, 2017 under the title Alias J.J., lo que pasa tras las rejas and concluded that May, and it reached Netflix later the same year. It is a prison drama with a real man at its center, and that is both its power and its problem.
JJ
Juan Pablo Urrego plays JJ, and the series follows him as the Medellín Cartel crumbles and Escobar’s number one hit man struggles to stay alive and earn respect in the prison hierarchy. Urrego is very good. He plays JJ as a man who has done monstrous things and regards them as work, and the performance never asks the audience to like him. It asks them to understand how he thinks, which is more uncomfortable and more interesting.
The Prison
The series lives behind bars. The prison has its own economy, its own politics and its own wars, and JJ’s survival depends on reading them faster than the men around him. Toto Vega, Ramsés Ramos, Roberto Mateos and Frank Beltrán play the rivals, allies and guards whose loyalties shift by the episode, and Luis Mesa plays the prison director trying to hold a place that does not want to be held.
The Women
Nicole Santamaría plays JJ’s wife Alexandra, Natasha Klauss plays Ana María Solozábal, and Amparo Grisales plays Mónica Machado, JJ’s lawyer, and the scenes outside the prison give the series its second world. The lawyer in particular is the show’s best invention, a woman who knows exactly who her client is and represents him anyway.
Why It Works
The show is disciplined about its subject. It is not a cartel epic; Escobar is a shadow and a memory rather than a character. It is about what happens to the men who did his killing after he is gone, and that narrower frame gives the series a tension most narco dramas lack. Nobody here is building an empire. Everyone is trying to make it to tomorrow.
Where It Falls Short
The source is a memoir by a killer, and the series inherits its perspective. JJ’s account of himself is the show’s account of him, and a viewer who wants the victims’ side will not find much of it. The run is long, sixty-nine episodes in Colombia, and the prison plots repeat: a threat, a deal, a betrayal, a new threat. The telenovela rhythms, with their cliffhangers and declarations, sit awkwardly on this material.
The Verdict
Surviving Escobar: Alias JJ is a well-acted, claustrophobic crime drama that takes a hard subject seriously and a difficult narrator at his word. It is compelling. It is also, inescapably, a hit man’s version of events.
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