‘Selena: The Series’ on Netflix fails to give singer a voice

Tejano’s queen, Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, had a history of rags-to-riches made for the screen. Growing up in poverty in Corpus Christi, Texas, she learned Spanish through telenovelas and persevered in a male-dominated music industry to become a big star, forever changing the face of pop music and tejano in the United States and Latin America. Her murder in 1995 at the age of 23 was the tragic end of a Cinderella story.

Sadly, Netflix’s biographical drama “Selena: The Series”, which releases Friday, neither captures nor honors the memory of this remarkable performer as it traces her meteoric rise in nine 30-minute episodes during the premiere of two seasons planned.

Rather, the story here centers on his father and brother, the patriarchs of the Quintanilla family, who oversees his estate. They also produced the series. This is an insurmountable problem for an already formulated series, created by Moisés Zamora and directed by Hiromi Kamata.

Viewers never know who Selena is, what motivates her or what holds her back, as she has never given the same attention or character development as the men behind her career.

The first two episodes establish that Selena’s musician father Abraham Quintanilla (Ricardo Chavira) is an ambitious, demanding and demanding dreamer. He is determined to lift his family out of poverty by pushing his children to musical stardom that has eluded him. He assembles a family group, Selena y Los Dinos, and becomes the engine of his success.

Brother AB (Gabriel Chavarria) is his faithful son. He’s an aspiring bassist and businessman who struggles to meet his father’s high expectations. He is torn between his family and the founding of a new family. Her crisis includes songwriting blocks and education puzzles.

For her part, Selena (played by Christian Serratos from “The Walking Dead”) is a charismatic presence. When Serratos enters the scene as a singer, the series lights up. She embodies the spirit of the show’s namesake, challenging a crowd of old-school Tejano in Mexico by singing a Jody Watley cover song and later wooing young converts with hits like “Como la Flor” and “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom”. Serratos adds her own flair to the role, as Jennifer Lopez did in her portrayal of the singer in the 1997 biopic “Selena”.

But unlike Lopez, Serratos didn’t have much to do behind the scenes. Netflix’s Selena is a sweet girl who enjoys designing clothes, dyeing her hair and, of course, singing – the show rarely goes any further than that. Played in her younger years by the effervescent Madison Taylor Baez, when Selena ventures towards moments of self-discovery, the family story quickly diverts attention and we are placed in the story of dad or AB. Rarely is mom Marcella (Seidy Lopez) or her sister Suzette (Noemi Gonzalez) in the spotlight.

Even as the series enters Selena’s teens and early twenties, it’s her professional successes and essays that are used to define her, rather than the type of characterization that might illuminate her inner life. When she tries to find who she really is, it’s through the prism to ask her father for advice: “Some singers have it, like a costume,” she tells him after commenting on her frequent changes in hair color. “They do their hair differently each time or put on make-up because that’s what they are. Well, I don’t always know who I am until I am.

It’s a sad commentary on children’s fame, and it underscores the harsh reality that Selena isn’t here to tell her own story.

Other issues with the series include awkward dialogue, cheesy jokes, and family scenes that feel too designed to promote a healthy image of the household and business. Selena misses school on the road, performing in venues across Texas, but besides missing her friends, she’s doing well – just like her father predicted. Her family isn’t happy when she continues with the band’s guitarist, her future husband Chris Pérez (Jesse Posey), but as bossy as they are, they just watch over her.

“Selena: The Series” functions as a cross-cultural time capsule from the ’80s and’ 90s, filled with original tracks sung by Selena and the band. Crooning Spanish-language classics and singing along to English radio hits (Eddie Rabbitt, Kajagoogoo) as they drive through Texas in their battered tour van – or, later, a luxury bus, for gigs through the United States – they evoke a specific sense of time and place. And yes, puff sleeve jumpsuits, belly shirts, mall bangs, and mules are fun too.

As the series leaves viewers on the precipice of what is to come – a deadly encounter with Yolanda Saldívar, Selena’s friend, ex-manager of her fashion boutiques and, ultimately, her murderer – its first nine episodes fail. not to foster a new understanding of music. icon, relying instead on the established legend.

Selena could sing. But she also had a voice. Too bad she didn’t give one here.