Cooking Up Murder: Uncovering the Story of César Román Review 2024 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
The story goes back and forth between 2018, when the torso dismembered body covered in a white powder was found in a suitcase under a staircase in a building in Madrid, and 2016, when Román became famous for his cachopo. Román was a man of short stature but great confidence, and he claimed that he’s done everything from being in the military to conducting top secret espionage.
His restaurant empire grew exponentially after the attention he got for his cachopo, but it wasn’t long before he stopped paying employees and suppliers, and the restaurants closed in rapid succession. At the same time he was dating Paz, a server at one of his restaurants. After she disappeared and the torso was found, the police wouldn’t tell Paz’s mother that she might be the one that was found, leaving her confused and in a distraught limbo. In the meantime, Román disappeared from public life, disguising himself and getting a job cooking at a restaurant in Zaragoza.
In a lot of ways, Cooking Up Murder is a pretty straightforward true crime docuseries; it lays out the case and the people involved and talks to the principals, including the person convicted of the murder. It doesn’t quite go in a linear fashion, but the time period it’s examining — Román rise to fame in 2016 through the 2018 murder of Paz and Román’s arrest and trial — is so short that the back and forth isn’t all that distracting.
What the producers of Cooking Up Murder have done a good job with is showing just how intricate the story Román constructed for himself actually is. They have multiple actors playing him in reenactments, along with tiny painted figurines representing the different aspects of his life that Román has discussed. In the first episode, they tend to hold judgement on whether these things that he’s saying are believable or not. At this point, they’re more interested in building the story of just how this heretofore unknown chef became so famous so quickly.
As usual, the victim, Heidi Paz, should get as much if not more attention than Román does, especially because we see him speculating that her dark side caught up to her as she was wrapped up in a cocaine bust shortly before her disappearance. The assumption is that she was eliminated by cartel types, not by Román. But by having him be able to freely state his views of what happened to her, the filmmakers are doing Paz and her mother a disservice.
