General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Memento mori (2023 TV series)

Memento mori is a Spanish crime thriller television series that had its streaming release on Amazon Prime Video on 27 October 2023, adapted from Versos, canciones y trocitos de carne, the trilogy of novels by the Valladolid writer César Pérez Gellida.¹ Produced by Zebra Producciones and directed by Marco A. Castillo and Fran Parra, it follows the pursuit of a meticulous serial killer by a police inspector and a criminologist in Valladolid.²

Key fact	Detail
Premiere	27 October 2023, exclusively on Prime Video in Spain and Portugal¹^•³
Source	First novel of César Pérez Gellida's trilogy Versos, canciones y trocitos de carne ("Verses, songs, and bits of flesh")⁴
Main cast	Yon González as Augusto, Francisco Ortiz as Inspector Sancho, Juan Echanove as Carapocha²
Setting	Valladolid, Spain, where the series is also filmed³
Season 1 format	Six episodes of roughly 45 to 50 minutes each⁵^•¹
Season 2	Titled "Día de la Ira" and inspired by the novel Dies irae; released on Prime Video on 25 April 2025 with five episodes⁶^•⁷^•⁸

Spoilers

Premise

The story begins when the body of a young woman with her eyelids amputated appears in Valladolid.² Inspector Sancho, fearing a chain of murders, joins forces with Carapocha, one of Spain's leading experts on serial killers, and starts following the trail of corpses left by Augusto, a sociopath with refined tastes.⁴ The killer's signature method gives the adaptation its title link to the novels: he commits each crime with a soundtrack playing and signs the bodies of his victims with poems.² What Sancho does not expect is that the chase will turn into a personal duel between hunter and hunted.²

The killer's full name is Augusto Ledesma, and the character is written as cultured and twisted: in the second season he walks through Valladolid in a heavy coat, smoking a Faria cigar and carrying his characteristic hair pomade.⁹

Production and adaptation

Prime Video commissioned the series from Zebra Producciones, the company behind the platform's earlier series El Cid.¹ The screenwriters responsible for adapting the trilogy were Germán Aparicio, Abraham Sastre, and Luis Arranz, who also share executive producing duties with Jose Velasco, Sara Fernández-Velasco, Marco A. Castillo, and Ibón Celaya.¹ Alfonso González Aguilar composed the original score.¹

The series premiered at the 68th edition of the Seminci, the Valladolid International Film Festival, before its streaming release on 27 October 2023.³ Principal photography took place in Valladolid itself, the city where the novels are set.³

Gellida took an active role in the adaptation. Executive producer Luis Arranz recalled that the project began amid uncertainty in the autumn of 2022 and "triumphantly" reached viewers in 2023, with strong numbers on the platform and in bookshops.⁹ The team credits the series' success in part to the author's willingness to have his prose recast in a different language for the screen, keeping the essence of the three volumes so that "the reader must recognize the novel in the series."⁹ Gellida, who published the first novel in 2013 and received the Premio Nadal during the series' run, said he enjoys seeing his novels gain "a second autonomous life."⁹

Second season

Prime Video renewed the series in April 2024, and the second season was filmed in Valladolid, with two weeks of shooting in September 2024 at locations including the historic Círculo de Recreo on the corner of Duque de la Victoria and Constitución streets.⁸ The new season, titled "Día de la Ira," adapts the second part of the literary saga and is inspired by the novel Dies irae.⁷^•⁶ It consists of five episodes, compared with six in the first.⁸

The plot continues the duel between Augusto (Yon González) and Inspector Sancho (Francisco Ortiz) after the killer flees Valladolid with Erika Lopategui (Olivia Baglivi). Sancho's obsession with catching him pushes him to his limit, while Carapocha works against the clock to save his daughter from the killer's grasp.⁷ A new character, Gracia Galo, played by Anna Favella, joins as an Italian inspector whose intelligence and emotional steadiness balance the hunt led by the head of the homicide group.⁸ The season was presented at Valladolid's Teatro Zorrilla and released on Prime Video on 25 April 2025.⁶

Reception and availability

Aggregator listings give the series modest ratings: FormulaTV users score it 6.3 out of 10, Kinopoisk lists a rating of 6.2, and SensaCine users give it 3.2 out of 5.¹^•¹⁰^•⁴ IMDbPro records five award nominations for the series and lists its run as 2023 to 2025.¹¹

Distribution figures vary by country and listing date. FormulaTV's data sheet shows two seasons and 11 episodes, while SensaCine and JustWatch list three seasons and 15 episodes, the third adding four episodes after the second season's five.¹^•⁴^•¹² The series streams on Amazon Prime Video in Spain, Portugal, France, and Andorra, and is available free with advertising on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom and Ireland.¹²

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026