Habeas Corpus Review: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Habeas Corpus is a solidly entertaining legal drama that discovers its real strength in the complicated relationship between its two lead characters rather than in the legal case driving the plot.
Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Platform: Netflix
Genre: Legal Drama
Episodes: 8
Language: Portuguese
Cast: Marjorie Estiano, Any Gabrielly, Vladimir Brichta
There is a genuinely fascinating series hiding inside Netflix’s Habeas Corpus. On paper, it has everything a legal thriller needs: a questionable murder conviction, a lawyer determined to reopen a case everyone else considers closed, law students investigating well beyond the boundaries of a classroom, and a justice system that may have failed someone in a way that cannot be undone.
Yet the show is at its strongest not when it functions as a conventional legal thriller, but when it slows down and becomes a character drama about what institutional failure actually does to the people living inside it.
The story follows Inez Franco, played by Marjorie Estiano, a former litigator who now teaches law after a violent courtroom shooting eight years earlier left her unable to set foot inside a courtroom again due to PTSD. Determined to reopen the case of Jonathan Ferreira dos Santos, a man serving 47 years for a double murder he may not have committed, Inez assembles a team of law students to investigate and eventually file a writ of habeas corpus.
One of those students, Marina, played by Any Gabrielly, is a young mother from the favelas of São Paulo juggling her son’s care with her determination to prove herself worthy of a spot on the team. Marina’s motivations, though, go far beyond wanting justice for Jonathan. She carries a secret personal connection to the very case that ended Inez’s courtroom career in the first place.
Marjorie Estiano is easily the clearest reason to stay invested throughout the series. Her performance as Inez carries a guarded, deeply weathered quality that makes even her quietest scenes feel meaningful, and Estiano understands how to communicate years of buried trauma without turning every moment into an emotional outburst.
Any Gabrielly provides an excellent counterbalance as Marina, someone whose confidence could easily tip into irritating territory, but Gabrielly gives her enough genuine uncertainty to make her choices feel complicated rather than simply calculated.
The relationship between Inez and Marina genuinely becomes the show’s most compelling material, carrying far more dramatic weight than many of the individual plot twists surrounding the central case itself.
Unfortunately, the series does not always seem to trust that material enough, occasionally reaching for another procedural twist when spending more time with its characters would have served the story better. Some revelations feel designed purely to push the next episode forward rather than genuinely deepen our understanding of what came before.
The show also raises a genuinely interesting question it never fully commits to exploring: if the legal system is being challenged for producing an unjust outcome, what happens when the people trying to correct that injustice start bending the rules themselves?
Inez and her students deceive people, chase leads through questionable methods, and repeatedly enter spaces they have no real business being in. That contradiction could have elevated Habeas Corpus from an entertaining legal thriller into something sharper and more thought-provoking, but the show tends to treat this behavior mainly as a source of tension rather than something the characters are truly forced to reckon with.
The wider student ensemble suffers from a similar issue, often feeling more like functional pieces moving the investigation forward rather than fully realized people in their own right. Across eight episodes, that imbalance becomes more noticeable, with certain stretches feeling like they are simply waiting for the next big complication rather than building momentum organically.
Still, the show’s melodramatic instincts end up being both its greatest strength and its biggest structural weakness. Personal relationships, old wounds, and conflicting loyalties are constantly woven into the legal investigation, giving the series real personality even when that emotional focus occasionally overwhelms the central case itself.
By the finale, what genuinely lingers is not the legal mechanics or individual plot twists, but the deeper questions surrounding Inez and Marina, what they are willing to sacrifice, and how much personal history they are each carrying into a case that is supposed to be about someone else entirely.
If lighthearted meta-comedy is more your speed after all this courtroom drama, our review of Brothers, starring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, is worth checking out too.