Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Time It Takes’ On Netflix, Where A Relationship And Its Post-Breakup Reality Play Out In 11-Minute Episodes

The streaming era has introduced viewers to series formats that defy tradition. The new Spanish series The Time It Takes plays with the traditional romantic drama format in two ways: Each episode is only 11-minutes long, and each spends a set time in the past and the rest of the time in the present. Does the format work or is it distracting?

THE TIME IT TAKES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A graphic says “1 Minute In The Present and 10 Minutes In The Past.” Then we switch to the scene of two people in an apartment fighting.

The Gist: The Time It Takes is a series of ten 11-minute episodes that examines the nine-year relationship between Lina (Nadia de Santiago) and Nico (Álvaro Cervantes) and how Lina moves on after they break up. The amount of time spent in the present and past changes in each episode as Lina stays more in the present and thinks less about the past.

But in the first episode, the breakup is new and still raw. Nico all but tells Lina that he doesn’t love her anymore, and he asks if she wants him to say that he wasted the last nine years. At this, Lina flashes back to the day they met. They were both working at an island resort; she was a night shift housekeeper and he woke up early to set up the diving excursions.

He asked her for a cup of coffee, and along the way, he helps her clean up around the pool, and the two of them discuss their life plans. Along the way, he tries to find out why she never went scuba diving; his feeling is because she’s afraid of getting the “shitty wet suit, the one someone peed in.” As they spend the overnight together, eating cereal in the kitchen and generally getting to know each other, they fall for each other. As the sun rises over the ocean, she gets into the brand new wet suit he had, and the two of them kiss.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Because of the format, it’s hard to pin down a show that’s comparable to The Time It Takes. It certainly brings to mind other high-concept romance dramas on streaming, like High Fidelity or Love Life, but they just share the fact that they have high-concept formats.

Our Take: Created by Nadia de Santiago, Inés Pintor, Pablo Santidrián and Pablo Fernández, The Time It Takes (original title: El Tiempo que Te Doy) is more of a thought experiment than a drama with well-defined characters going through a primary conflict. It mostly works for what it is, which is more like a complex two-person stage play, and that’s because the lead performances are so compelling. But if you’re looking for a romantic drama you can seek your teeth into, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

The format of the series is what rules the story, when that’s the case, the big thing that suffers is character development. Here, it’s not just the limitations of the “X minutes in the past and X minutes in the present” format, it’s also because the episodes themselves are already only 11 minutes long. There’s not much in the way of getting to know the characters when the writers are penned in by not one, but two major creative restrictions.

Again, it’s not like de Santiago and Cervantes aren’t compelling to watch. Even when they’re in conflict, there is a tantalizing chemistry between them that we don’t see when de Santiago is alone in the “present” segments of subsequent episodes. In those episodes, Lina talks to Nico’s friend when he picks up Nico’s things, or she tries to “get back out there” with a coworker, but finds out that she’s not ready.

Yes, we get the idea that Lina is rebuilding her life and its painful. And we get that as the episodes go along, we’ll get more insight into how their instantaneous chemistry went so sour. But we would have also been happy to see this story play out in a more linear fashion, with a more traditional episode lengths — like 25-30 minutes — that allowed for some more exploration into what they both brought into the relationship that ultimately tore it apart.

Sex and Skin: There’s some very brief nudity, but none of it is gratuitous.

Parting Shot: Back to the present. “So it’s over then?” Lina says. “I wish we never met,” says Nico.

Sleeper Star: The show isn’t a pure two-hander, but its stars are so dominant in the story that there really isn’t room for any of the supporting players to stand out.

Most Pilot-y Line: The “dolphin cups” that supposedly every guest at the resort steals look like gravy boats, not something you’d drink coffee out of.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Because of its format, The Time It Takes feels more like a play than a series. But the performances of its lead make it a very enjoyable play. Just don’t expect anything deep or serious from the show.

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.

Stream The Time It Takes On Netflix