In the latest series from showrunner Álex Pina (best known for Money Heist), audiences are taken on a journey beneath the froth of the foam parties Ibiza is known for to give us the seedy underbelly of a long buried murder mystery dug up anew. All starting with Zoe Walker’s (Laura Haddock) determination to find out once and for all what happened to her successful DJ of a brother, Axel Collins (Tom Rhys Harries), after his body is unearthed on the land of the Calafat family in Andalusia’s Almería, roughly 522 kilometers from Ibiza. Despite her husband, Mike (Barry Ward), initially accompanying her on the journey for moral support, he returns to their home in Manchester to look after their daughter, Jenny (Tallulah Evans). Left to her own devices, it doesn’t take Zoe long to understand why Axel fell so far and so fast down the rabbit hole after leaving Manchester when he was twenty years old, with his three best friends, Marcus (Daniel Mays), David (Laurence Fox) and Anna (Angela Griffin)–all of whom remain on the island to this day. In spite of the lingering ghost of Axel that still clearly plagues them all.
A ghost they had managed to keep at bay until Zoe came along to re-stoke the haunting. Turning up at Marcus’ house first, Zoe is introduced quickly to the underhanded, cutthroat ways of the island when the longtime security guard of the influential Andreu Calafat (Pedro Casablanc), Boxer (Nuno Lopes), shows up to interrogate Marcus all over again. As he did to everyone in Axel’s inner circle twenty years ago. But with the corpse turned up on a Calafat property, Andreu is just as determined as Zoe to figure out who the murderer was for the sake of clearing suspicions surrounding his son Oriol’s (Juan Diego Botto) involvement in Axel’s disappearance a.k.a. death. The story his autopsy report tells, in fact, is that he died and then disappeared. Was dragged away from the island after mercilessly being run over, bludgeoned and, finally, stabbed in the neck. And all of this after being drowned. The amount of drugs in his system, of course, was in keeping with what one would expect of Ibiza’s most revered DJ after a twenty-four party in celebration of his twenty-fourth birthday (clearly, it’s no coincidence that Manchester’s own Happy Mondays have a song called “24 Hour Party People”).
With the tagline, “Some nights are so big, you’ll never recover,” the core of White Lines explores the notion of Axel’s self-destructive nature feeding off the propelling forces at play on the island. Where debauchery is not only encouraged, but appears to be the “national pastime” (with Ibiza often feeling like its own otherworldly country). One puppeteered by the Calafat family and their wealth, sprung from owning most of the nightlife on the island. Tellingly, it is their daughter, Kika (Marta Milans), that Axel falls for–even if it’s her mother, Conchita (Belén López), who takes a shine to him first after he gets all geeky about her collection of opera records.
Amadeus, indeed, is a running figure throughout the narrative, and–if we’re going by the bombastic film version of Mozart’s life–has plenty of symbolic value in terms of mirroring Axel’s own life of musical genius and hedonism. Pina’s deft interweaving between time periods (frequently flashing back to 1996 in Manchester, the year that finally pushed Axel to flee)–allowing Axel to remain forever young–also offers subtle insight into just why so many Brits have a penchant for colonizing Ibiza, hopping over to this paradisiacal island from their own gray, far bleaker one. Case in point is one of the poster children for the British invasion of Ibiza, Paul Oakenfold, who, incidentally, also spent his twenty-fourth birthday in sin (as Axel) by traveling to the island for the first time in 1987, where he dabbled with ecstasy in the company of fellow Brit DJs, Trevor Fung, Nicky Holloway, Ian Saint Paul, Danny Rampling and Johnny Walker. Naturally their antics took place in the British-overrun San Antonio (San Antoni de Portmany). And it was during that late summer that the British invasion was truly born–making it possible for fictional characters like Axel Collins to feel compelled to try his British hand at DJing there. Setting the stage for a British colonization that, for once, involved no violence–just music.
Axel’s determination for greatness is what drives him to test his limits further and further, all as a means to prove to everyone that he has none. Yet when he finally does prove that even to himself, he realizes he’s gone too far, and must do everything in his power to turn back around on the path he’s led himself down–of course, his murderer had other plans for him. Even those who would naysay the show, branding it as “trashy” (or just a glorified soap opera), can’t deny that White Lines often bears the qualities of Greek tragedy. For Axel’s fate is doomed from the start by the foibles that were solidified by the death of his mother and the intolerance of his father, Clint (Francis Magee), during his formative years.
White Lines, as a title, too, bears the double meaning referring to cocaine and the effect of a boat creating white wakes of water. Indeed, Axel was very much like such a boat, leaving untold white lines of havoc in his tempestuous wake. From a sonorous perspective, it also deliberately conjures thoughts of the term “white lies,” of which many are told throughout the season in order for each character to preserve some form of power or control they want to maintain over something or someone. In point of fact, for an island as “free-loving” as Ibiza (a vibe established by hippies in the 60s and early 70s, with many defecting to this paradise for sanctuary from the political oppression of Franco’s Spain), there sure is a lot of possessiveness going on among the “protagonists” of the show. And yes, protagonist is a loose definement for many of them, including the often hypocritical Zoe.
Even in the face of this White Lines-specific possessiveness, however, Ibiza comes across as it truly is: in many regards, a real life Neverland (J. M. Barrie’s version, of course–not the one related to Michael Jackson’s sullying of the concept). That’s why it’s so poignant that Axel was never able to transcend out of his twenties, dying before the cold realities of the lifestyle’s putrefaction and ennui could set in (as it did for Marcello in La Dolce Vita). Fittingly, many conversations between the characters on the show center on this idea that experiences become less and less exciting with each passing year, and that, for someone like Axel, who peaked so soon in life, there was a sense of pity to be had for him (specifically Marcus, who laments this very thing about Axel to Zoe). For where else would he be able to go from that point forward?
In this sense, the suicide of Avicii aligns with this harsh look at the meteoric pace and ascent of “personality-based” DJs such as Axel. The former was, by age twenty-three, hospitalized for acute pancreatitis from alcohol consumption. Considering the lifestyle of the “Ibiza DJ”–and the international touring that comes with fame on the island–Avicii’s decision to take his own life (with self-inflicted wounds caused by broken shards of glass from a wine bottle–poetic, to be sure) is in keeping with Axel’s own self-destructive path. As his friends say, even if he didn’t technically commit suicide, he was constantly looking for someone to assist him in the matter, what with the way he lived his life so heedlessly.
Ibiza, at first, was an oasis to someone like Axel, who could at least unleash his innermost desires and dreams without judgment. In a place where youthful adults go to crystallize some of the best experiences of their life. The problem is, some of them get too drunk on a more metaphorical level than a literal one. Drunk with the notion that life can be like this forever, all the time. Without the consequences that go hand in hand with reckless pleasure. As David, turned from junkie to guru in the time since Axel’s death, is finally forced to break it down for Zoe (perpetually self-righteous and indignant), “In this fucking world, we’re all fighting the expectations we had when we were younger. We imagined that we would build this tower of light and sensation and ecstasy, but life is the exact opposite of that. Life is watching, day by day, as that tower is torn down and cast into the void like pieces of a children’s toy.” Even in a land as magical as Ibiza, where decay still can’t be outrun.
As for a second season of the show, there are surely other plotlines to be explored, though it wouldn’t be the worst if White Lines stopped here, with the image of Zoe finally accepting her brother’s death, and the person he was. And, even with just one season, if nothing else, you can do a line every time a British person says “Eye-beeth-uh.”
