That Night

The Sisters We Choose

I’ve been thinking about the way families lie to each other—not the big, dramatic lies, but the small, daily ones. The kind you tell over breakfast, or in the backseat of a car, or while packing a suitcase for a trip you’re not sure you should take. That Night (Netflix, 2026) is a show about three sisters who lie so much they forget what the truth even looks like. And then, because life has a cruel sense of humor, they’re forced to remember.

The premise is simple: Ane (Clara Galle), a young single mother, accidentally kills a man during a chaotic night on a Dominican Republic vacation. Her sisters, Claudia (Claudia Salas) and Leire (Paula Usero), rush to help her cover it up. What follows is a six-episode spiral of guilt, paranoia, and increasingly desperate decisions.

It’s a familiar setup—Big Little Lies meets The White Lotus, with a dash of Prisoners—but the show’s strength isn’t in its plot twists. It’s in the way it forces you to watch these women unravel, not because they’re villains, but because they’re so painfully human.

The first episode moves like a thriller, all tight close-ups and escalating dread. Ane, wide-eyed and trembling, stares at the body on the floor of her villa. Claudia, the eldest, takes charge with the kind of brisk efficiency that suggests she’s used to cleaning up messes—just not this kind.

Leire, the youngest, is the first to crack, her voice shaking as she whispers, “We can’t just leave him here.” The camera lingers on their hands: Ane’s fingers digging into her own arms, Claudia’s steady grip on a wine bottle she’s using to smash evidence, Leire’s nails bitten to the quick. These are not master criminals. They’re sisters who’ve spent their lives protecting each other from smaller things—bad boyfriends, overdue rent, their own worst impulses—and now they’re in over their heads.

What makes That Night compelling, even when it stumbles, is the way it refuses to let these women off the hook. The show’s biggest flaw—its unsympathetic leads—is also its most interesting choice. Ane isn’t a damsel in distress; she’s reckless, selfish, and prone to self-pity.

Claudia isn’t a maternal figure; she’s controlling, judgmental, and just as capable of cruelty as Ane is of carelessness. Leire, the youngest, is the most likable, but even she’s not innocent—she’s the one who suggests they move the body, who rationalizes the first lie, who sets the whole disaster in motion. The audience isn’t asked to root for them.