Historia de un clan

The most original aspect of this series is the family and how perfectly the actors render their, uh, quirks. "Based on real events" is a staggering claim, but here they are the grand and glorious Puccio family who could probably qualify as their own psychological disorder. While the social fabric in Agrentina was strained during the time of the crimes, this bunch brings a whole new meaning to pathology...which is both hair-raising and very, very funny.

Imagine bringing the mark of a kidnapping home, keeping him hostage in a bathroom and believing none of the rest of the family is aware of what's going on. As the criminal syndicate who thought up this disastrous little project gather and regularly march in and out of the house without anyone asking, "What are you doing?" Not since "The Accidental Tourist" have such a family of eccentrics been assembled. Their crimes become legendary.

The style the director chose is straightforward (with magnificent yet unsettling mise-en-scène), you feel like you've never seen anything like it. Gathered for dinner, the family wearing full head masks as the daughters perform a dance that probably will never again find comparison in film. And Cecilia Roth as the mother of this lot, brings such a subtle humor in her performance as the wife who can't sit still or the family won't have clean clothes or food to eat without her efforts (and that's probably true). Once the ransom money starts pouring in, she takes on the role of bourgeoise with great alacrity, hiring a maid/cook/housekeeper so she can shop with the same determination she devoted to caring for her family...yet she's bored with her new found freedom and longs to put the vacuum to use.

At least her daughter has moved on from having a nun (who tap dances) in her bedroom to a "voluptuous" nude for her daily sketches. The shame it brings in her mother's eyes disrupts the moral balance in the family, yet the body tied up in the bathroom seems outside her gaze.

The series becomes darker and darker with each episode as the crimes become more frequent and the family members' tenuous sanity gets buried with each body. But our enjoyment increases with what the producers accomplish: the foolishness and avarice of men...and the blood ties that no one ever seems to think or able to verbalize, "I'm outta here, folks."

Don't miss this. It truly is one of a kind...just like the Puccio's and their "Association" and its exploits.