The Bugle Sounds Again:Narcos S3.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Until he becomes my enemy again. When that happens - God help them" - Javier Pena.

Season three of Narcos (Netflix) may just be the best of them all. The action has shifted from Medellin to Cali and the emphasis has shifted from Pablo Escobar to the Gentleman of Cali, on the surface at least, a far more sophisticated operation. The mood, or tone, of the piece has shifted too, ever so subtly. While there are still scenes of horrendous violence, torture, and people being shot there are more introspective moments in Cali than we'd previously witnessed in Medellin.

Calm reflection would be pushing it but it's the scenes where Jorge Salcedo Cabrera (a superb Matias Varela), the Cali Cartel's head of security, ponders what action to take to save himself, his wife Paola (Taliana Vargas), and his children that grip the tightest. The final few episodes, particularly, in season three are as fraught with menace as anything that had come before and there are so many twists and turns in the story you genuinely have no idea how things may pan out. I'm not normally a fan of extended shoot out scenes but here they are handled so elegantly and choreographed with such precision that they work both as action set pieces and provide exposition and narrative.

I also found myself genuinely hoping for the best for at least some of the characters. Others, it's less easy to care about. The Cali Cartel are a slick operation, where Escobar had mixed with the proles the self-styled Gentlemen of Cali hobnob with the city's elite, where Escobar craved the spotlight the Gentlemen of Cali prefer the relative quiet of the shadows, and their smuggling routes through Mexico, Europe, and the Far East have made them very very rich.

They spend billions of dollars a year paying off politicians and they own almost all of Cali's airports, taxis, and phone networks. If something happens in Cali it doesn't take long before 'Pacho' Herrera (Alberto Ammann), 'Chepe' Santacruz-Londono (Pepe Rapazote), and brothers Miguel (Francisco Denis) and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela (Damian Alcazar) get to hear about it - and if they don't like it it's not long before action is taken.

Gilberto is first among equals in this leading group, the chess player who is always one move ahead of his rivals and has three wives to show for his seniority, but when he makes the decision that it is time for the Gentlemen of Cali to go straight, strike a deal with the government that will see them spend a short time in a reasonably palatial 'prison' in return for future impunity, things, predictably, do not go according to plan.

Do his fellow leaders even want to go straight? Chepe likes his life in New York as the head of the Cartel's American operation, he even boasts he'll "fuck the Statue of Liberty in the ass", Pacho has been speaking to members of Mexican cartels with views on possible expansion (Escobar had seen Mexicans as a threat, Pacho sees them as an opportunity), and Miguel, the Cartel's number two, at least to begin with, gives very little away. Keen to show loyalty to his brother.

Cali, described as "the Soviet Union with nice weather", looks spectacular. A dramatically tropical, verdant, paradise where women prepare food by the beneath parasols by the side of roads flanked by majestic colonial architecture as Mazdas zoom past on their way to bustling plazas full of beautiful men and beautiful women relaxing with frescas at juice bars or knocking back aguaridente to the sound of cumbia.

But, of course, there is trouble in paradise. The Gentlemen of Cali like to promote the idea that they're sophisticated and above getting their hands dirty but they've not earned the nickname of the Cali KGB for nothing. They've got some pretty imaginative, and unpleasant, ways of dispensing with their enemies. A rival is attached to chains and pulled apart by two motorcycles, they get through more plastic bags than Sainsbury's, and if you were worried if the fish in the Cauca river that flows to the east of the city weren't eating well you won't be anymore.

The North Valley Cartel, the Cali Cartel's main rivals, don't even pretend to be gentlemanly. A scene in which they chainsaw off the heads of a group of their enemies makes this abundantly clear. The appetite for violence among Cartel operatives is unabated but the general population of Colombia, fatigued by the atrocities of the Escobar era, are sick of the sight of bloodshed and in America, too, there has been a change.

Bill Clinton has replaced George Bush as President and the war against drugs has become, to all intents and purposes, a proxy war, a front to protect US intervention in Colombian politics. While the murky dealings that underplay this are played out in offices and restaurants, and the high ranking members of the Cali Cartel live lives of ostensible glamour in the upper echelons of high society, a glut of corruption thrives in Cali that does little to help those in poverty feed their children.

In the jungle things are worse still. It's a world of black ops, FARC guerrillas, and morally dubious CIA schemes. Suspicion is everywhere and everyone is treated with suspicion. Paranoia hides in the trees and the threat of death lurks around every corner. As the action flits back and forth between the streets of Cali, the haciendas of the Cartel, the governmental offices of Bogota, and the makeshift encampments of the jungle we're taken on a whirlwind ride with Javier Pena (Pedro Pascal) our pilot.

With Murphy departed for season three, Pena is joined by DEA agents Chris Feistl (Michael Stahl-David) and Daniel Van Ness (Matt Whelan) in his work in Cali. Feistl and Van Ness are young, green and come across as college jocks to begin with but they grow into their roles to become part of what is a very strong ensemble piece of television.

Credit must go to Javier Camara as the Cartel's accountant Guillermo Pallomari, Juan Sebastian Calero as the almost cartoon like violence loving henchman Navegante, Miguel Angel Silvestre as money launderer Franklin Jurado (his brief spell in Curacao allowing us to learn a brief history of that country), Kerry Bishe as Christina, Jurado's American wife, Carlo Lasso as Enrique, a Cartel member drawn into an intrigue not of his own making, and Eric Lange as Bill Steichner, the CIA chief in Colombia.

As well as Mauricio Cujar as the returning Don Berna. Better still is Andrea Londo as Maria Salazar, a glamorous young mother who is passed from drug kingpin to drug kingpin and, as with most of the women in this decidedly male drama, does far better with the meagre role she's been given than you'd imagine possible. For me though, the best performances are from Ammann as the flamboyant and openly gay Pacho, Denis as the brooding Miguel, and Arturo Castro as Miguel's son David.

Castro plays David as a renegade from a 1950s New York knife gang. At all times, he is a bomb about to explode and this sense of constant menace, sometimes quiet, sometimes loud but always present, never lets up and lends his scenes a deep unease. The ice to his fire, and for me the beating heart of the whole season - perhaps even more so than Maritza in season two, is Salcedo.

Varela plays him with quiet perfection. A man who knows that one unfortunate glance, one word out of place, could cost him and his family their lives, Salcedo is forced into scenarios in which he must make decisions not between right or wrong but between wrong and very wrong and not between life and death but between death and death. We root for him even as we know his own earlier greed has brought him to this dangerous place.

In a drama dealing with acts so unbelievably callous and brutal this beating human heart is vital. The soundtrack, as with seasons one and two, was excellent too. LL Cool J, GZA, Montell Jordan, Jeru the Damaja, and Bell Biv Devoe rubbed shoulders with Latin salsa and mambo musicians and groups like Cuba's Israel 'Cachao' Lopez, Puerto Rico's Angel Canales, and Colombia's Los Nuevos Del Pacifico and Orquesta Guayacan, and, most unlikely of all, the goth rock outfit Lords of the New Church.

The music, the settings, and the performances all combined together, in this and every other season of Narcos, to create a story that was almost beyond belief in terms of wealth, in terms of violence, and in terms of corruption but it was, despite of all that, at heart, a very human drama. Good versus bad. Sometimes that is played out between two people or two groups of people. Sometimes that is played out inside the soul of a single person.