TV Tonight: HBO's Other New Drama

HBO LATINO

If True Blood isn't doing it for you, you have one other HBO drama option while you (or at least I) anxiously await the return of Big Love next year. Capadocia, a Mexican-produced drama set in a women's prison, debuts tonight on HBO Latino, with English captions for the no-habla-ing among us.

The title is the name of a new prison being opened as a public-private partnership, as an alliance between a prison-reform advocate and a corporation looking for cheap labor. In exchange for building a prison dedicated to utopian ideals of rehabilitation, the state agrees to allow the company to operate it in conjunction with a factory. Persuading the government to approve the experiment turns out to be bloodier business than expected, however; the company ends up fomenting a deadly riot to create a public outcry and justify the opening of Capadocia. The drama bounces back and forth between the home lives of the officials on the outside, the corporate intrigues and the fights inside the prison among rival women and gangs. (Yes, there's also girl-on-girl action, thanks for asking.)

I don't want to oversell Capadocia: it's heavy with telenovela melodrama, and a central storyline in which a wronged housewife (Nacho Libre's Ana de la Reguera, left) ends up convicted and sent to the prison stretches plausibility. Still, it's a pretty solid and well-produced crime-and-conspiracy thriller, while you serve your time waiting for new programming.