Olympo (Netflix) Review: Racy Sport Drama

Olympo is a binge-worthy show about sports, friendship, ambition, and how far people are willing to go to get what they want.

The Pirineos Center of High Performance, the fictional elite training school Olympo is set in, starts descending into chaos when Nuria (Maria Romanillos), one of the athletes in the synchronised swimming team, faints in the pool and is seemingly unconscious and unresponsive. The circumstances around Nuria’s incident and not so speedy recovery start to look more and more suspicious to the athletes in the centre, including her best friend and captain of the team Amaia (Clara Galle). The latter will go to great lengths to discover the truths as she grows wary of everyone around her, especially newcomer Zoe (Nora Oshawa), who seems to have a lot to hide.

Naturally, sports is the main focus of Olympo and the show films its sports sequences very well. The stakes of the games or competition the protagonists are involved in are clear from the very beginning of the series, making them a key part of the narrative rather than the backdrop for it to take place in. The sport side of the story is also explained very well for those in the audience. Those who might not be familiar with rugby, synchronised swimming, or heptathlon can still easily follow the story and be very much involved in the athletes’ competition because we care about the characters who take part in them. 

I also really liked how the show reverses expectations constantly, which allows Olympo to constantly build tension and keep us at the edge of our seats until the very end. While getting a sponsorship with Olympo may seem like a dream at the beginning, both the audience and the characters soon begin to question the mystery around what actually happens to the athletes who sign with them. The show is at its best once it manages to find its feet and focus on this storyline after the first few episodes when the various plot lines are still introduced. 

Olympo also sheds a light on some interesting themes in sports that are very relevant today. On the one hand, the series does a really good job at addressing the controversial topic of doping in the sports world in a way that both calls it out but also allows some understanding for the athletes who may fall into it. Homosexuality also plays a really big part in one of the main storylines of the show, allowing it to address peer pressure and homophobia, which are both still very much present in sports like rugby. 

I wish Olympo had explored some of its side plot lines and characters a little bit more. For example, Renata’s storyline may very well be one of the most interesting and original elements of the entire series, but it feels like the show forgets about it a few episodes after it’s introduced, leaving it behind to focus on the series’ main characters and central mystery. Olympo focuses on too many topics that cannot be explored in its eight-episode runtime. At times, the lines also feel a little artificial, but admittedly this may also be due to the translation from Spanish not necessarily grasping all the nuances of the original language.

Overall, Olympo delivers an intriguing full season full of twists and turns that will keep the audience hooked until its very final shot. Even if the show has just ended, I already know I can’t wait for the next season to find out more about the harsh reality of Olympo that these first eight episodes only touched upon. 

Olympo is now available to stream globally on Netflix.