What do you do when you have to move to a parent you’ve never met? Or when the child you never raised went back to you? Itxaso and the Sea explores this in this Basque family drama, with coming-of-age and slightly suspenseful subplots. Itxaso, raised in Mexico, is a fish-out-of-water in this coastal town, and, with the upheavals in her life, has a choice to make between staying and reconnecting with her father, and her Basque heritage. Mikel, who stayed behind town, tries to keep his surfing school and his life the way it is. There’s a compelling plot here, as they try to grasp the lives they want to live, over connecting with each other, but the series’ multiple subplots muddle the personal family dynamic.

Itxaso and the Sea is a family drama where a father and daughter awkwardly try to reconnect with each other. It’s also a coming-of-age series as Itxaso tries to adjust from her high-spending city life to her father’s calmer, small-town coastal living, and gets to know other residents, including some of her father’s former students. On top of this, there’s a whole business scheme as Mikel tries to make his surfing school profitable, much to the chagrin of his much richer friend. The series has a hard time balancing between these plotlines, but in trying to do all of these, it misses out on the emotional core between father and daughter – the shared grief of losing former wife and mother Elene.