The Asunta Case
2024 Series
The Last Hours of Mario Biondo
2023
Ended • 1 Season • 3 Episodes
Overview
Questions persist about the last night of Mario Biondo, the husband of Spanish TV host Raquel Sánchez Silva. This true-crime series uncovers new details.
Seasons
- Status
- Ended
- Seasons
- 1 season
- Episodes
- 3 episodes
- First aired
- Aug 3, 2023
Reviews
5 min readThe True Crime That Ate Itself
I kept waiting for The Last Hours of Mario Biondo to turn into something else—a detective story, a meditation on grief, even a takedown of tabloid culture. Instead, it kept circling the same drain: a family convinced of a conspiracy, a widow who won’t speak, and a case that refuses to close. By the third episode, I realized the real mystery wasn’t how Mario died, but why we’re still watching this.
The series opens with a promise: new details about the 2013 death of Mario Biondo, the Italian cameraman married to Spanish TV host Raquel Sánchez Silva. The facts, as presented, are stark. Mario was found hanging in their Madrid apartment.
The police ruled it suicide. His family refused to accept it. A decade of legal battles, media appearances, and public accusations followed.
The docuseries positions itself as the final word, the one that will lay bare the truth.
But truth, here, is a moving target.
The first episode is the most compelling. It reconstructs Mario’s final hours with the precision of a procedural. We see him at work, at home, on the phone with his brother.
The timeline is clear, the details vivid. There’s a moment where the camera lingers on a half-empty glass of wine, a pair of shoes left by the door. It’s the kind of small, human detail that makes true crime feel immediate.
For a while, it works. You lean in, waiting for the twist, the revelation that will make sense of it all.
Then the family takes over.
Mario’s parents and brother are the heart of the series—or its undoing, depending on your patience. They are convinced Raquel is hiding something. They pore over autopsy reports, point to inconsistencies in the police investigation, and insist Mario would never take his own life.
Their grief is real, but so is their obsession. The docuseries gives them ample screen time to air their theories, and what starts as a search for answers becomes a platform for their crusade.
Audience Opinions
Audience 5.3/10
"An engrossing but lopsided true-crime doc that turns into a portrait of a family's obsession more than a search for truth."
The mysterious circumstances of Mario Biondo’s death and the detailed reconstruction of his final hours keep the case itself engaging, and some viewers found the storytelling clear and easy to follow. latestnetflix.com's view is that at the same time, the focus on the family’s denial and media crusade feels exploitative and repetitive, with padded interviews and no real resolution beyond reinforcing how unhinged and cruel the blame toward the widow appears.
What viewers praise
- Compelling central case The unexplained death and conflicting interpretations create a naturally gripping mystery for those unfamiliar with the story.
- Clear timeline of events The series methodically walks through Mario’s last hours and the ensuing investigations in a way that feels easy to track.
- Media circus perspective Several viewers appreciated that the show exposes how a long-running media campaign and legal battle spiraled out of control after the death.
Common complaints
- Family depicted as unhinged The parents and brother are widely seen as delusional, vindictive, and fixated on blaming the widow despite multiple suicide rulings.
- Exploitative treatment of grief The documentary is criticized for feeling like it mocks the family’s pain while also giving them a paid stage to harass the widow and keep the scandal alive.
- Overstretched and repetitive Several comments describe it as a story that could fit in a single feature-length episode, with interview clips and arguments repeated to fill out the runtime.
- Focus on drama over truth The series is seen less as an investigation into Mario’s death and more as a showcase of a decades-long obsession, offering little new evidence and no closure.
- Draining viewing experience The relentless accusations, emotional volatility, and lack of balance leave some feeling angry, exhausted, or simply irritated rather than enlightened.
Recommended for
True crime docu-series completists Unresolved case aficionados Media circus and tabloid-culture watchers Spanish and Italian crime story followers
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsThe widow's lawyers said she told Netflix no.
Almost a month after The Last Hours of Mario Biondo landed on 3 August 2023, Ontier Espana sent a four-point letter. Raquel Sanchez Silva, they wrote, had not planned, recorded, or supplied a frame of the series. She had told both her then-representative Guillermo Gomez Sancha and Netflix executives that she opposed any program about Mario Biondo's death. She wanted the same public silence she had kept since 2013. The letter added that she had not watched the series and did not intend to. latestnetflix.com's take is that Ontier would watch it for her, and would defend her interests if the cut required it.
,
A manager made the series. His client walked.
The fight was already on paper. The same letter says the clash over the project ended their professional relationship in November 2022, after years together. PAR Producciones, the company Gomez co-founded, produced the three-part Spanish original. Maria Pulido directed. El Mundo reported she started work in 2021 and shot more than 200 hours. Executive producers were Gomez and Luis Velo. Pulido told the paper she wanted viewers to weigh the file themselves, not a cherry-picked thesis. ScreenRant notes an end title saying Silva was asked to appear and declined. Gomez speaks in her place. , ,
That is the gossip the title cannot shake. A true-crime drop about a TV presenter's dead husband, produced by the man who used to manage her, after she told the platform not to make it. Netflix still premiered three episodes, TV-MA, original Spanish. Episode titles on the English page are "Mario's Night," "High-Profile Trial," and "Mario Wasn't Alone." Runtimes sit in the low 40s. TMDB files it as a finished miniseries. ,
The family signed on, then tried to stop the premiere.
Mario's relatives sat for cameras. El Diario says they moved to freeze the launch once they learned Gomez was behind it. After it still dropped, Santina Biondo, Mario's mother, said through lawyers that it is hard for a mother to lose a son and harder to feel used by someone who profits from the pain. Pulido told El Mundo the parents later felt deceived because they were not told the producer was the ex-manager of the woman they blame. The last episode flags Italian press and the Emme Team, a private outfit the family later said had conned them. , ,
Spanish police and repeated rulings treated the May 2013 death as suicide. Digital Spy notes there has never been evidence that Raquel was involved, and she was never charged. The series still recites the family's murder claim, the Formentera trip after the funeral, and years of talk-show warfare. El Mundo's count, echoed on screen per ScreenRant, is 16 Spanish judges, Italian prosecutors, two exhumations, three autopsies, and zero convictions. Pulido's closer, quoted in El Mundo, is that the wound will not close. The missing interview is what fans keep arguing about. The letter says she told the platform not to make it. Netflix made it anyway. , , ,
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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