Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Angi: Fake Life, True Crime’ on Netflix, a controversial docuseries about a woman who took on the identity of the person she murdered

The Spanish docuseries Angi: Fake Life, True Crime was supposed to stream on Netflix starting on May 1, but a court injunction stopped the service from streaming it at the very last second. Earlier this week, Netflix finally debuted the series without any fanfare. We may never know exactly what caused the controversy, but what we do know is that something isn’t quite right about this series.

Opening Shot: A home video of Juan Antonio Álvarez Litben, the husband of María Ángeles Molina; he died under mysterious circumstances.

The Gist: Angi: Fake Life, True Crime is a two-part docuseries, directed by Carlos Agulló, that takes a look at how in 2008, María Ángeles Molina, known as Angi, killed her Ana Páez and took on her identity. Agulló also reexamines the 1996 death of Litben, who was only 45 at the time, and tries to find out why the case was reconsidered after Páez’s death and why Angi was never arrested in conjunction with it.

In 2008 Barcelona, Páez’s body was found in a short-term rental apartment, naked with a plastic bag over her head. The death was made to look like a sexual encounter gone wrong, including DNA samples from two different men. As the death was investigated, her friend María Ángeles Molina gave the police a long, bizarre interview where she said her alibi was picking up her father’s ashes in a city three hours away. But CCTV of a woman entering a bank and withdrawing money from Páez shows that Angi was impersonating her. Soon, evidence of life insurance policies taken in out in Páez’s name were revealed.

Angi’s life with Litben in the Canary Islands is examined, because of all of the lies she told to him and others at the time, including that she was the daughter of a prominent judge. She also spent wildly in an effort to make her look more well-off than she was. After the death of Páez put the focus back on Litben’s sudden death 12 years earlier, evidence came out that Angi was planning a solo life in Barcelona in the weeks and months before Litben’s death.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Angi: Fake Life, True Crime is similar to true crime docuseries like Mr. & Mrs. Murder.

Our Take: There are a few theories as to why a court order prevented Netflix from rolling out this docuseries on its original May 1 premiere date and who asked for it, but there are a few things we noticed that give us our own ideas. One, almost every face in the archival stills that isn’t Angi or someone who isn’t alive anymore has been digitally blurred, which makes us think that someone didn’t want their image displayed on the series. Another is the disjoined ending in the second episode, which we’ll discuss in a second.

The series is very ambitious, with Agulló trying to explain all of the fraud that Angi committed leading up to Páez’s murder, plus the investigation of Litben’s 1996 death, in two short episodes, both clocking in at under 40 minutes. It feels like he skips over a lot of details in both cases, as you will find out if you read articles about the docuseries.

There is also conflicting information about Angi’s status; in parts, it says she is in prison until at least 2027, in others, it says she’ll be released shortly after the docuseries airs. But what concerns us the most is that the true scope of Angi’s lies and fraud isn’t really explored. We get some info about how she became friends with Páez, but not if she did so with the pure intent of committing fraud in her name, and we’re not given a whole lot of details about her plan to make her friend’s death look like a sexual encounter gone wrong.

The second episode, which speculates on the death of Litben and how it was reexamined in the wake of Páez’s death, is even more bizarre, with an ending that we can’t even begin to explain. Put it all together, it makes for an extremely unsatisfying viewing experience that leaves the viewers with a lot of questions and almost no answers.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: The ending of the second episode involves an actor in a reenactment, and an on-screen statement that seems to go against everything that was said about Angi’s current status.

Sleeper Star: None. The interviewees are a series of cops and a few people who knew Angi, Litben and Páez, but no one stands out.

Most Pilot-y Line: Almost everything is reenacted, with either actors or some of the interviewees, even things as innocuous as a detective getting the call about Páez’s body.

Our Call: SKIP IT. We don’t know if Angi: Fake Life, True Crime is so disjointed because of the court order or because it was originally made that way. Either way, it doesn’t shed any light on the hows and whys around María Ángeles Molina’s lies and leaves viewers even more confused about the case than they were going in.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.