Narcos, the Netflix-original branded product tells the story of Pablo Escobar and tt’s crammed full of ideology. What starts out as a narrated, documentary-style attempt to show the rise and fall of the Colombian cocaine kingpin, boils down to a show which manages to rob Colombians of their own history. Rather than its impact on society, it can be argued that the it’s presentation of society’s influence is sub-par, to say the least.

The show depicts Colombia as a country of narco trafficking, cocaine, Pablo Escobar, drugs, the Drug Enforcement Agency, guns, violence and loose women. Almost every Colombian depicted is a criminal, a corrupt public officer, or a woman trying to get ahead through sex.

Most importantly, the show glorifies Pablo Escobar. Mentioning Pablo Escobar in any sort of reverence is about the worst taboo you can commit in Colombia. It’s equal to praising Osama bin Laden in the United States. This makes sense considering the fact that Escobar was responsible for killing of roughly 3000 people including, the explosion of a commercial airline flight out of Bogota that killed 110 people.

Narcos never really showed us Escobar’s populist side. To many in his home city of Medellin, he was seen as a Robin Hood type figure, spending money on social projects at a time when the Colombian government was seen as not to be doing enough to help its own people. Instead Narcos uses the horrendous things that happened during the height of Pablo’s power as a way to shock and to entertain us, the viewers; real footage of the murder of Colombians is shown on screen without a proper context of how and why it happened.

Moreover on the topic of stereotyping Colombia’s society, Steve Murphy, the narrator and DEA officer, calls Colombia a “country where dreams and reality are conflated.” With a one-sided  voiceover coming from an all-American hero, serving the purpose of guiding viewers about what to think during Escobar’s rise and fall, it seems as though Narcos was only really ever meant for American audiences. It really does perpuate the patronizing “gringo” sensibilities. Right from the very first episode, DEA agent Steve reveals the primary motivation behind the U.S. involvement in Columbia was not the drug-related murders but rather Ronald Reagan’s administration’s concerns over the health of Miami’s economy in the face of billions of dollars leaving the U.S. annually.

Narcos only represents a single story from Colombia’s rich history. This pseudo-documentary TV show is really not changing anything. It’s a great TV show in terms of entertainment with all the shootouts, well thought out drug transport and the cat and mouse interactions. There’s a casual disrespect, in that most U.S. viewers will not finish Season 2 of the Netflix show and know any more about the real Colombia, or the way Padilha, Narcos‘ director, and his crew portray the country’s historical credentials.