Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Now And Then’ On Apple TV+, Where College Friends Reunite 20 Years Later When Their Secret May Get Revealed

There seem to be plenty of shows involving a group of former friends who have to keep a murderous secret years later, and are dealing with a threat to that secret. It’s the template that made I Know What You Did Last Summer a hit, but it’s translated to hit shows in the streaming era, like Yellowjackets and Who Killed Sara? Now a Spanish-English series that takes place in Miami takes that template and expands on it.

NOW AND THEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “Miami, 2000”. We see a camcorder viewscreen of a bunch of friends getting out of a car and going to the beach.

The Gist: Right before college graduation, the six friends in that video were all hopeful and ambitious. But what is a fun night on the beach with some beer and a little E turns deadly for Marcos (Jack Duarte), Dani (Miranda de la Serna), Ana (Alicia Jaziz), Pedro (Dario Yazbek Bernal) and Sofia (Alicia Sanz) when they pull their friend Alejandro (Jorge López) out of the surf after an incident. He’s dead, but it’s not an accident, and when they get into a car crash as they try to figure out what to do with him, they decide to make it look like he died in the crash, and that he was driving by himself.

Twenty years later, most of the group is spread across Miami, but they all get a text that they need to go to their reunion or their secret will be revealed. Pedro (José María Yazpik) and Ana (Marina de Tavira) are married — she and Alejandro were together in 2000 — and Pedro is running for political office. Marcos (Manolo Cardona) is a plastic surgeon who just got engaged. Dani (Soledad Villamil) has kept all of the videos she made of her friends, though the one numbered “35”, which depicted Alejandro’s death, was supposedly pitched into the sea. Sofia (Maribel Verdú) seems to lead a more itinerant life, beholden to drug dealers.

Back in 2000, MPD detectives John Sullivan (Zeljko Ivanek) and Flora Neruda (Rosie Perez) investigate the accident, and while Sullivan just think it’s rich college kids being stupid, things don’t add up for Neruda. And as they question Alejandro’s friends, she points out parts of their stories that feel inconsistent with other parts.

In the present, the five former friends are told to pay $1 million each or their secret will be revealed. They agree to pay, but Marco’s lawyer, who drops off the ransom, finds out who she thinks is the blackmailer. But that goes awry when said blackmailer ends up dead — in a case that now-sergeant Neruda is in charge of.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Now And Then has a similar plot to I Know What You Did Last Summer, Yellowjackets, Who Killed Sara? and other shows where a group of people have a murderous secret that might be revealed.

Our Take: There’s not much about the plot of Now And Then that is new or all that interesting. Created by Ramón Campos, Teresa Fernández-Valdés and Gema R. Neira, the show’s uniqueness perhaps lies in the fact that it’s a mostly Spanish-language show that takes place in Miami, but nothing in the first episode made us want to figure out just what happened to Alejandro, who did it and why this group decided they needed to cover it up.

But then Perez appears and something about the show changes. It becomes less about this group, at least to us, and more about Neruda’s pursuit of the truth. It certainly feels that the more the show concentrates on her investigation — both in the present and in the past, trying to overcome the cynical Sullivan’s view of things — the more interesting it is.

Because, let’s face it: The stories of the group that’s being blackmailed aren’t all that interesting. There’s some class differences, like the fact that Pedro’s family worked for Alejandro’s, and it seems that Pedro has overcome his youthful awkwardness. There’s a rekindling of what Sofia and Marcos had back in college, despite the fact that Marcos is engaged to what his father thinks is the perfect woman. There’s also Sofia’s dark past.

But none of this really matters as we see Neruda looking into things. It could be that Perez is that good — and she is! — but it might also be a function of the fact that the “fatal five”, so to speak, is a collection of one- to one-and-a-half-dimensional characters we’ve seen many times before.

Sex and Skin: Sofia and Marcos have sex in Marcos’ car, seemingly right near the entrance of a swanky hotel. But everyone keeps their clothes on.

Parting Shot: Det. Neruda watches the videos found at the murder scene she was investigating. Little does she know that one of them might be missing.

Sleeper Star: Zeljko Ivanek can play world-weary with the best of them, and having him play Sullivan brings the right amount of cynicism to the investigation.

Most Pilot-y Line: Pedro to Ana about their kids: “Do you want them to grow up without parents? Because murder doesn’t expire.” Yes, Pedro, murder doesn’t expire. Never has.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Despite a fine performance from Perez, we fear we’re not going to see enough of her to make suffering through the generic main characters of Now And Then tolerable.

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.