Prime Video’s 8-Part Historical Drama Adaptation Is Officially a Global Smash

While Prime Video’s original series often draw from novels to tell their stories, they rarely do as much justice to the book as 2026’s The House of the Spirits, with some exceptions like Barry Jenkins’ take on Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad. Drawing from Chilean author Isabel Allende’s 1982 debut novel of the same name, the show does a beautiful job transposing the book’s blend of multigenerational family saga, magical realism, and poetic tale of the ravages of time and the longstanding effects of violence to a new medium. The series is not afraid to be melodramatic, colorful, and rich, studying the Trueba family from their humble beginnings in an unnamed Latin American country that slowly descends into a horrific political situation. Narrating the saga is Alba (Rochi Hernandez), who thrusts us into the world of the family with as much speed as The Royal Tenenbaums.

Every episode of The House of the Spirits feels like a short film in itself, with the show as a whole mimicking the book’s decades-spanning structure. Much like the first season of House of the Dragon, years can pass between episodes, but familial relationships stay the same, lingering on old wounds and traumas hidden behind. Allende’s novel was unafraid to deal with heavy subject matter, like animal violence, a country’s descent into fascism, and sexual violence, and the show’s faithfulness to those aspects of the book is its greatest feature. Part of the passage of time is conveyed by a color palette. Like in Greta Gerwig’s 2019 take on Little Women, the nostalgic early years are often offset by a steely grey-blue take on the present day, as Alba pores over her family history, digging into a journal left behind by her clairvoyant grandmother Clara (Dolores Fonzi as an older woman; Nicole Wallace in younger years). Clara’s journal is a Rosetta Stone for the family history, a document of 50 years from the mid-1920s onward.

‘House of the Spirits’ Has A Compelling Villain in Esteban Trueba

While The House of the Spirits moves quickly through its eras, running with a montage-like pace through Esteban Trueba’s (Alfonso Herrera) courtship of Clara’s older sister Rosa (Chiara Parravicini), it’s hard to imagine it in a more condensed timeframe. But the book was first adapted as a Hollywood drama in 1993, with a number of subplots shelved and a cast full of English-speaking actors like Jeremy Irons, whose cold villainy was appropriate enough for Esteban, but not quite on the level of Herrera’s three-dimensional performance. After Rosa’s tragic early passing, the show version of Esteban grows into a darkly tyrannical patriarch whose class resentment and casual cruelty becomes a stand-in for the terrors the country will soon face. Herrera’s performance as Esteban shows his descent and development into the wicked master of Las Tres Marías, the Trueba family estate, and the eventual husband of Clara.

Esteban is a tricky character, in large part because he lasts so long. The series is brutal and rewarding because it deals so much with the subjugation, abuse, and resilience of women. Esteban is an immediate foil. In his younger years, his cruel treatment of women and campaign of sexual misconduct have aftereffects you can only see by the series’ end, with the full picture in mind. Rising from the back-breaking toils of mine work to being a property owner, he has nothing but contempt for the political shift heralded by the arrival of the Communist party to the country. Because of the show’s structure, with Alba looking backwards at events, viewers get a sense of dramatic irony not quite present in Allende’s novel, with a sense of where all these lives go. That framing device casts a unique glow on the show’s rich melodrama. Births and deaths collide as Clara, whose clairvoyant gifts become more prominent as the show progresses, gives birth to Esteban’s daughter Blanca (Fernanda Urrejola, who co-wrote the series, in middle age; Sara Becker in younger years).

‘House of the Spirits’ Is A Magical Realist Latin Melodrama

By emphasizing the actual Latin American qualities of the original decades-spanning book, the show gets the chance to breathe, with its operatic elements playing directly against its larger saga of political change. It’s neither a dry retelling of history nor total soap opera, but a mix that is true to the spirit of Isabel Allende’s novel. Its acknowledgment of the passage of time means one episode might have a character being born and the next might cast them as a young adult. Alba grows from childhood to participating in revolutionary politics and discovering horrific truths about her family. The novel emphasized heartache, trauma, and magical realism, and the show works in the same big, melodramatic beats, slowly replacing the charming nostalgia of its early episodes with the devastation of a country falling into ruin. If the first half of the show is Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the second is more Steven Soderbergh.

Ghosts are real in the story of House of the Spirits. They are almost incidental, complex characters in their own right that can guide or complicate the journeys of the living. Uncle Marcos (Juan Pablo Raba) serves as a ghostly confidant to young Clara, and in the 1970s, Alba is often visited by her grandmother Clara in times of great despair. But more pertinently, the ghosts reflect Esteban’s actions and the privilege the family was able to experience by ignoring who had to pay most, particularly in the form of Esteban Garcia, Jr. (Pedro De Tavira). The show is a richly compelling meditation throughout, and a novel adaptation that allows the characters the tragic complexity they deserve.