Trade

Trade's uniqueness of narrative lies in its ‘puzzle’ presentation, but also in the chameleon nature of the puzzle itself. The first 2 episodes follow Mexican- American homicide detectives, Alberto Rodriguez and Ray Silva, in their pursuit of a deaf serial killer. Their search leads them through the heart of the Los Angeles sex trade, and into the recesses of human darkness. A handful of characters are central to the first season, but none more so than Alberto Rodriguez. After his girlfriend Joana commits suicide, he struggles to separate the shadows from the light. His loss of moral clarity leads him on an unlikely collision course with Johnathan Kassel, a deaf serial killer who has been stalking his primary victim for almost two decades. Ultimately, TRADE is a complex character study set within a crime thriller. The crimes themselves are secondary to a search for meaning in our modern world... a world that has substituted the laws of nature for its own, more ‘civilized’ laws. As the puzzle pieces are set in place, a portrait of Rodriguez emerges that is equally brutal and vulnerable. It is a portrait more familiar than any of us might like to imagine.