Review: 'Echoes Of The Past'

One of the most difficult things about getting old is that your life is increasingly filled up with ghosts. Ghosts of loved ones you've lost, the ghosts of bad decisions you can't quite put behind you. "What might have been" is one of those thoughts that is equal parts counter-productive and potentially painful. But it's also something you can't quite put out of your head.

The ghosts are the past are at the center of Echoes Of The Past, a complex and surprising 8-episode series produced in Egypt for Netflix. The series is a remake of the Netflix Mexican original Who Killed Sara? and while it doesn't quite match the brilliance of the original, it is still a entertaining ride for fans of global TV whodunnits.

Everything begins with a scuba dive gone wrong. A group of friends dive and one of them, Nadia (Huda El Mufti), suffers a catastrophic equipment failure and dies. On the beach after the accident, her brother Yahia (Asser Yassin) cradles her body and angerly yells as his friend Ali, who was responsible for checking the equipment.

It's now 15 years later and Yahia is just getting out of prison. In flashbacks, we see that Ali's rich and abusive father Yasin (Mahmoud Hemida), convinces Yahia to take the blame for his sister's death. He paid Yahia a large sum of money and promised that since it was an accident, he would spend at most a year in jail. Instead, police investigators discovered Nadia's air hose had been tampered with and Yahia was convicted of murder.

Now that he's free, Yahia embarks on a mission of revenge as he attempts to discover the truth about what might have happened. Through a mix of flashbacks, old archival video and Yahia's disruptive investigation, we begin to see some of the blanks filled in as the list of suspects from Ali to his cousin (and Yahia best friend), to Ali's sister Mona (who Yahia had loved), then on to Ali's mother and later his father.

As Yahia rips through their family like a deranged sawblade, he teams up with Yasin’s younger daughter Layla (Rakeen Saad), who has her own reasons for wanting to figure out the truth. They don't leave a secret undiscovered and the results destroy the entire family's lives.

I had a hunch at about episode six on the identity of the killer. But I didn't have any real reason to think so and all I can ultimately say is that the twists and turns in Echoes Of The Past continue until the very least moments of the show. 

The story is tautly constructed and even when I suspected what might be coming, I only saw the outlines. And even then, I was often wrong. 

The show is also helped by distinctive cinematography, including these interior overhead shots that look as if they were shot by a drone from 30 feet above the actors.

Echoes Of The Past is currently streaming on Netflix.