"Nada hacía presagiar..."'note
Mea culpa is a Chilean True Crime Anthology television series broadcast by TVN, the public broadcaster of Chile, hosted by journalist and writer Carlos Pinto, first premiered in 1993. He recreates with actors the crimes that have shocked Chilean public opinion in a trustworthy way, even featuring interviews with the culprits themselves. All of this has earned him a large audience.
The main music at the beginning of the program was composed by Edgardo Riquelme in 1993 who also composed certain themes used as incidental music in some chapters.
Given its graphic dramatization of murders, rapes or other crimes that endanger human life, this series is exclusively for adults.
It has 14 seasons since 1993, with two hiatus (one from 1999 to 2003, and the longest one from 2009 to 2021). Currently airing its 14th season, most of the previous episodes are available on TVN's YouTube channel for series and telenovelas
and on TVN Play.
Mea Culpa contains examples of:
- Art Evolution: Quite expected for a long-runner. It switched to HD for season 13 (2008-2009), and for season 14 (2021) runs on 24 frames per second.
- Based on a True Story: All of it.
- Body in a Breadbox: One of the most commented cases, "El tambor" note (Season 10, 2005), has its victims' bodies (the murderer's ex-couple and their 9 years old son) put in a barrel and covered with cement.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Carlos Pinto as the narrator does this by appearing on screen Once per Episode, mainly before the intense scenes happen. This serves as a reminder to the audience that they're watching a dramatization and not the real thing. Some seasons enhance the effect by having Pinto popping out from unusual places.
- Carried by the Host: At this point it is impossible to imagine Mea Culpa without Carlos Pinto. Chilean writer Pablo Simonetti even compares him to Alfred Hitchcock.
- Crime Reconstruction: The main attraction.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: While Carlos Pinto has been there narrating the stories, the first season of the show was presented in a studio by Cecilia Serrano (then one of the hosts of 24 Horas, the primetime news of TVN) and featured a table of experts analyzing the dramatization just shown. Since season 2 Pinto became the only host.
- Inheritance Murder: The 2021
un-canceled season starts with one of these; the story of the "cursed inheritance". - Ominous Fog: Most of the intro has a jail hallway covered in this. It has become a
meme on Chile, commonly portraying the fog as following Carlos Pinto wherever he goes, even outside the show! - Title, Please!: Notably, the intro for Season 14 (2021) doesn't display the show's logo (it does appear after the credits), instead going directly to the title of the episode. Given the iconicity of the show itself and its intro sequence, everyone in Chile knows this is Mea Culpa, becoming one of the few shows in the country (if not the only one) that can get away with this.
