Midnight Family Tells The True Story of Family-Run Ambulances in Mexico & It’s My Fave Medical Drama Yet

Marigaby Tamayo (Renata Vaca) is a paramedic, as is older brother Marcus (Diego Calva) and their father, Ramón (Joaquin Cosío). Marigaby’s younger brother, Julío (Sergio Bautista), also aspires to be a paramedic. Every night in Mexico City, the family of four embarks on a new adventure in their private ambulance, looking for emergencies where hurt people need urgent care and transportation to the hospital. Every episode of the Spanish-language Apple TV series Midnight Family is a thrilling undertaking into Mexico City’s unique and vivid nightlife, where anything and everything can happen. Through the eyes of Marigaby, who, like her father, has an unrelenting duty to her profession, the hospital drama displays the cultural and social dimensions of the city, never flinching away from the gory reality of accidents, assaults, and drunken brawls. 

Inspired by the 2019 documentary of the same name, Midnight Family reveals a reality that is very specific to Mexico City: In a city of more than 8 million people, private ambulances sprung up to fill a gap left by the insufficient number of public ambulances. 

The Tamayo family’s adventures draw from the real experiences of the Ochoa family, which worked seven days a week for years and made very little money. In the fictionalized version, Marigaby juggles work as a paramedic by night and her coursework by day as a medical student. Technically, she cannot practice any kind of medicine outside of the university — but her family has no other way to support itself. As Marigaby struggles, we see she’s at the intersection of two different classes: a future as a medical doctor — like the professors in her university who pressure her to stop practicing — and her current reality as a first aid responder, or those who dedicate themselves to a dangerous job for very little money. 

Marigaby dreams of becoming an urgent care doctor, making her the first in the family to make the jump from paramedic to medical doctor. Because of her years of experience as a paramedic and school training, she has a talent for medicine, but when she arrives at the hospital, doctors, who believe they know better than her, dismiss her. And while she may not have the same amount of experience because of opportunity and class differences, Marigaby demonstrates a dedication to helping injured and sick people  — here, Vaca particularly shines, believably showing us that Marigaby feels called to be a helper. 

Just as Marigaby winds up working as a paramedic, so do her brothers Marcus and Julio, who must join the family business to help their father and each other survive. Both brothers are on their own journeys to figure out what to do with their futures. For Marcus, who is the oldest of the three, his addiction to the adrenaline of being a paramedic comes into conflict with his Colombian girlfriend’s desire to leave Mexico City for Los Angeles. Despite speaking Spanish, Cris (Mariana Gómez) faces discrimination and xenophobia in Mexico. Her story shows that while she comes from another part of Latin America, she is not welcome as an immigrant. She expresses her rage by making music with a group of street rappers. Cris desperately wants to move to the U.S. with Marcus to seek a better life, but Marcus feels the weight of his family’s financial burdens are too acute to leave.

While the family’s work is important and serves a very needy population — Mexico City only has 45 publicly owned ambulances — there is a precariousness involved in the job. In the first episode, when Marcus charges a woman whose boyfriend beat her up for the ambulance’s services, the mention of payment is a little jarring. But the reality is that the family isn’t making that much money and the police often harass them. The patriarch of the family, Ramón, has health problems that are incompatible with the physical, stressful business of driving around Mexico City and rescuing people, but he must continue to work to pay for his medical treatment. 

It reveals the push and pull of a necessary job that isn’t well rewarded or protected in a city with few opportunities for professional growth. I appreciated how the show delves into each character’s battle with the instability they navigate. It’s particularly interesting from the perspectives of Marigaby and Cris, two women trying to survive the best they can in a city that isn’t kind to women who live in poverty. 

In the genre of hospital dramas, Midnight Family stands out as an original depiction of medical emergencies and how the professionals in the urgent care field deal with the extreme emotions and pressures of tending to people in dire situations, sometimes even life and death. A highlight is Yalitza Aparicio’s performance as one of Marigaby’s patients, who the protagonist ends up saving and adopting as a friend. At the end of the day, Midnight Family is a TV show about connections with people and the fickleness of life itself. It can be a little cheesy at times, but the cast always brings it back to the importance of care, family, and love for each other.

It was a pleasant surprise to see a Colombian migrant’s story in the show, as this kind of narrative doesn’t usually get much attention. The migration of Latine people most often appears in U.S. television shows where Latine people move to the U.S. looking for a better life, but a significant number of Latines migrate to other Latin American countries, too, and have their particular struggles in assimilating to a new Latin American culture. Seeing Cris’ story develop was something new on-screen; I hope other shows tackle this experience. 

There were a few different kinds of Spanish accents throughout the show, which I appreciated. It would be completely unrealistic to ignore the diversity of Mexico City, so I think they made the right choice to showcase it. 

While there was a diversity of skin tones throughout the show, there weren’t any Black characters — despite the narrative around rap battles — which I thought was a bit strange. I did like the inclusion of Indigenous actress Yalitza Aparicio, but I wish she was a show regular rather than a patient that probably will not come back in future seasons. 

I loved that Yalitza’s character has a girlfriend but none of the main characters is queer or trans. Personally, this discourages me from watching other seasons as Marigaby’s very heterosexual problems are deeply unrelatable to me. The show would be more interesting if it introduced more sexually diverse characters — the love stories felt boring to me because they were so formulaic and so straight. 

Midnight Family doesn’t challenge any tropes or stereotypes. Like most hospital dramas, it heavily leans on the cliche that people in the medical field feel called to be the helpers and the doctors of society, but I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. It’s a feature of the genre and a lot of people love that. One thing I want to note is that Latina women trying to “make it” out of poverty is a huge stereotype that Midnight Family invokes — but I actually think it treats this storyline with care and complexity.

I really enjoyed watching this show, even though medical dramas aren’t usually a genre I watch. I learned a lot about the world of private ambulances in Mexico City — I didn’t even know they were a thing before — and the show left me feeling contemplative about the space between life and death.