Production Context
A Widow's Game (La viuda negra, 2025) is a Spanish true crime series directed by Carlos Sedes, produced by Bambú Producciones for Netflix — the same team behind the critically acclaimed El caso Asunta. Production design was led by Ángel Amaro.
Collaborating with Carlos Sedes and Bambú Producciones, we aligned our digital design with the hyper-realistic tone of the production, ensuring that every pixel felt like a part of the original art direction. The series reconstructs the 2017 murder of Antonio Navarro in Valencia — known as the "Black Widow of Patraix" case. The conviction in October 2020 rested on what investigators found on screens.
That's not a metaphor. The actual crime — its planning, its execution, its concealment — passed through mobile phones. The messages, the calls, the location data, the contradictions between what was said privately and what was claimed publicly: this is where the case lived. And this is where the drama lives too.
Designing the screen work for this production meant understanding that the screens weren't props supporting a story about a crime. They were narrative load-bearing elements — the architecture of the crime itself.
Forensic UI: Period-Accurate Mobile Interfaces
Our work on A Widow's Game focused on what we call 'Forensic UI'. Instead of creating clean, optimized interfaces, we simulated the aesthetic of actual 2017 communication. This meant respecting the era's specific typography, iconography, and the inherent 'messiness' of a personal device. By prioritizing authenticity over graphic perfection, we provide the narrative with a layer of digital truth that audiences recognize instinctively.
The case of Maje — the "Black Widow of Patraix" — was built almost entirely on digital footprints. The protagonist sustained multiple parallel relationships simultaneously, managed exclusively through chat apps. Without those message threads, it would have been impossible to understand how she convinced Salvador to commit the murder.
Messages reveal emotional dependencies and strategic inconsistencies. Call patterns show what was said to whom, and when. Location data from cell towers and GPS placed people where they claimed not to be. Dramatically, the mobile is where the mask slips. While Maje played the role of "devastated widow" in public, her private messages revealed that within hours of the murder, she was already making plans with other lovers.
The series required working with devices from that era — some models even slightly older than 2017, as not every character would have the latest phone. This variation added realism: people don't all upgrade simultaneously. By providing fully functional interfaces on set, we eliminated the need for post-production screen replacement and allowed for a more organic interaction between the cast and the digital environment.
SISTEPOL 3.5: Designing Law Enforcement Wiretapping Software
The second pillar of the production is SISTEPOL 3.5 — the police wiretapping interface. To maintain the show's commitment to institutional realism, we avoided the "high-tech" Hollywood tropes. Real law enforcement surveillance software is functional, utilitarian, and often looks dated because it prioritizes stability over aesthetics.
When we designed SISTEPOL, the primary reference was The Wire — not for its visual style, but for its understanding of what wiretap work actually looks like. Investigators spend months listening to conversations, waiting for the moment when the mask drops. From there, we researched real wiretapping programs on the market and used them as a knowledge base to design our custom surveillance system. SISTEPOL doesn't visually resemble The Wire's wiretap interface, but The Wire was the conceptual starting point for understanding the workflow.
SISTEPOL was built around two operational modes, each serving a different dramatic function:
- Live Monitoring (Red) — presents an active interception in progress. The red waveform builds in real-time, signaling to the audience that the investigation is happening now. This mode was used dramatically in full-screen close-ups to heighten tension.
- Recorded Playback (Blue) — allows investigators to review captured audio. The blue waveform represents the past — a record already captured and ready for analysis.
This chromatic narrative became a visual grammar that the audience reads subconsciously. Red is present. Blue is past. The dramatic register shifts accordingly.
Directing Audience Focus Through Close-Ups
During key revelatory moments, the production used dramatic full-screen close-ups of SISTEPOL to direct audience focus to audio content rather than interface aesthetics. These moments prioritize what is being said over how it's being displayed — the content becomes the visual.
On-Set Efficiency
The audio files themselves were pre-recorded and edited — we integrated them into the system. But the interface was designed to support spontaneous interaction. Actors could toggle between live and playback modes, use play/stop/pause controls, rewind, take notes on what they were hearing. These weren't complex interactions, but they were real. The actor wasn't performing alongside a playback loop — they were operating a tool.
This matters for performance. As Uta Hagen wrote in Respect for Acting: "The more specific you are about the objects and actions on stage, the more real the moment becomes." When an actor has interactive elements to work with — buttons that respond, notes they can actually type — the performance builds itself around those actions. The character emerges through use.
Institutional Realism: Why Law Enforcement Software Looks Old
Real law enforcement surveillance software looks old because it is old. These systems are built on solid infrastructure that prioritizes stability over interface design. They're procured through government processes and updated infrequently. The user base is fixed — police, military, intelligence agencies — and there's little competitive pressure to redesign the UI.
The visual language we designed for SISTEPOL reflects this: green-on-black readouts, phosphor-style displays, data tables structured for function rather than legibility. It looks like software that was deployed a decade ago and never significantly updated, because that's what real wiretapping systems look like. When your clients are institutions rather than the general public, and your software doesn't need frequent feature updates, the interface stays the same for years.
Period Accuracy: Hardware and Software Replication
Replicating the digital environment of the mid-2010s was a significant technical task. The challenge isn't visual — Android and iOS haven't changed dramatically in eight years. The challenge is technical. Older hardware runs on operating systems and frameworks that have since been deprecated. Workflows that function seamlessly on current devices require adaptation when the target is hardware from eight years ago.
For a true crime production from the team behind El caso Asunta, fidelity to the real case is non-negotiable. If the real events used 2017 hardware — and varied models across different economic and social contexts — the production replicates that reality. It's the invisible work that ensures the audience never loses their sense of immersion.
Narrative Architecture
Some screen design work sits in service of a story that exists independently of the screens. A Widow's Game is different. Remove the screens and you remove the story. The crime was committed through digital communication. The evidence was digital. The conviction rested on what the screens contained.
The phone and SISTEPOL are two halves of the same dramatic argument. One is where the lie is constructed. The other is where it comes apart. The screens don't illustrate that argument. They make it.
Screens are increasingly indispensable to narrative structure — not just in film, but in life. They transmit, communicate, transform, and catalyze emotion. In A Widow's Game, the screens aren't supporting characters. They are co-authors of the story.