Women in Blue review – calling this a real-life story is nothing but a misleading PR exercise

This supposedly ‘inspired by true events’ drama following Mexico City’s first female police unit – and its hunt for a serial killer – takes serious liberties with the facts

Truth used to be stranger than fiction; now they’re pretty much the same thing. It won’t have escaped your notice that most TV dramas no longer revolve solely around a screenwriter’s scribbled imaginings: if a new programme doesn’t arrive linked up to the existing pop cultural firmament – in the form of a novel adaptation, a reboot of an old series or a film-to-TV transfer – then the events told therein must have actually happened. One of the starkest shifts in television this decade has been the embrace of ripped-from-the-headlines stories, with scandals involving the Post Office, Jimmy Savile, the Royals and more all rehashed into controversial dramas, destined to replenish the news cycle that birthed them – winning a glut of publicity in the process.

In fact, we’re getting to the stage where it seems a bit odd if a drama is completely made-up. Isn’t there enough existing weirdness and wretchedness to work with? Why add any completely fabricated misery to the pile? And so it feels rational and reassuring to see the publicity around Apple TV+’s new Spanish-language crime drama Las Azules – Women in Blue for English-speaking markets – emphasise that it is “inspired by true events”. Indeed, it lends weight – as well as a macabre frisson – to its outlandish premise. Set in 1971, the series follows the formation of Mexico City’s first ever female police force, who operate under the spectre of a serial killer nicknamed the Undresser. Yet what these intrepid recruits don’t know is that their presence is merely a PR stunt designed to distract the press and public from the police’s failure to track down the murderer. Restricted to patrolling parks and calling for backup in the event of anything untoward, these newly minted female officers gradually realise that their male bosses have zero intention of giving them any proper power.

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