Review: 'Crime Diaries: Night Out'

In March, Netflix released the true-crime docudrama series "Crime Diaries: The Candidate," which took a slightly-fictionalized-but-based-on-a-true-story look at the 1994 assassination of Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio. Produced in Mexico, that Spanish-language project was the first of a planned group of similar shows that take a look at well-known true-life crimes stories.

The second installment of the series -  "Crime Diaries: Night Out" - was released on Netflix on Friday and it is a slick and slightly tawdry retelling of one of the stranger murder cases in Columbia. It's a case that continues to spark strong emotions from supporters on both sides and you're likely to get sucked into the details as well as the story unfolds over eight episodes.

The series is based on the 2010 disappearance death of college student Luis Andrés Colmenares Escobar. He ran off and was separated from his friends after leaving a late night Halloween party and his body was later discovered in a canal which had previously been examined by firemen searching the canal was he was last seen. His death was initially ruled a suicide, but the case was later reopened and several different people were accused of having some knowledge of his death.

If you're an American fan of true crime stories, you'll find a lot of the broad strokes of the case very familiar. Police misconduct, mistakes by the prosecution, incessant coverage from the media and efforts from all sides to spin their side of the story to the public. But this is also a very Colombian case and many of the details of the justice process in Columbia are very different than what you might expect to see in the United States. 

Corruption remains a serious problem in Columbia and the disheartening feeling that the fix is in is nearly overwhelming as the episodes play out. There are dead ends, surprise witnesses that often turn out to have been bribed and without giving anything away, the resolution likely won't make anyone happy.

Although "Crime Stories: Night Out" is based on a real case, producers are careful to offer a series of disclaimers warning the story is fictionalized and viewers shouldn't consider the series to be an accurate reflection of actual events. While that is true, the broad strokes of the fictionalized story seem to track the real facts of the case pretty closely. 

Regardless, this is an easy show to get sucked into, especially if you enjoy crime stories that primarily focus on the trial and its aftermath. The real-life case has been described as "Columbia's OJ Case" and there's some truth to that. It's a story that has many sides and I can almost guarantee that you'll be arguing about the facts of the case when the final episode wraps up.