Narcos (season 1)

• Wagner Moura as Pablo Escobar – a Colombian drug lord and the leader of the Medellín Cartel
• Boyd Holbrook as Steve Murphy – a DEA agent tasked with bringing down Escobar[4]
• Pedro Pascal as Javier Peña – a DEA agent, who is on Murphy's task force
• Joanna Christie as Connie Murphy[5] – Steve's wife, a nurse who works in the local hospital
• Juan Pablo Raba as Gustavo Gaviria – Escobar's cousin and one of the founding members of the Medellín Cartel
• Maurice Compte as Horacio Carrillo – a Colombian police chief, based on Colonel Hugo Martínez[6][7]
• Diego Cataño as Juan Diego "La Quica" Díaz – an assassin routinely hired by the Medellín, based on Dandeny Muñoz Mosquera
• Jorge A. Jiménez as Roberto "Poison" Ramos – a hitman hired by the Medellín Cartel, who often argues with Quica about personal death counts
• Paulina Gaitán as Tata Escobar – Escobar's wife, based on María Henao
• Paulina García as Hermilda Gaviria – Escobar's mother, a former Colombian schoolteacher
• Stephanie Sigman as Valeria Vélez – a Colombian journalist who also serves as Pablo Escobar's mistress, based on Virginia Vallejo[8][9]
• Bruno Bichir as Fernando Duque – a Colombian lawyer who represents Pablo Escobar, acting as his liaison with the Colombian government, based on Guido Parra.
• Raúl Méndez as César Gaviria – a Colombian economist and politician and the 28th President of Colombia
• Manolo Cardona as Eduardo Sandoval – the Vice Minister of Justice in President Gaviria's administration[10]

• Julián Díaz as El Negro or "Blackie" (né Nelson Hernández) – a member of the Medellín Cartel, who is frequently seen by Escobar's side (in real life, Escobar had a close friend named Jorge "El Negro" Pabón[11])
• Juan Sebastián Calero as Navegante – a violent associate of the Cali Cartel who works as their top henchman
• Jon-Michael Ecker as El León or "The Lion" – a childhood friend of Escobar's who becomes his first drug smuggler into Miami and subsequently runs Escobar's Miami operations
• Alberto Ammann as Hélmer "Pacho" Herrera – a Colombian drug lord and high-ranking member of the Cali Cartel
• Richard T. Jones as CIA Officer – a CIA officer, also on Murphy's task force
• Cristina Umaña as Judy Moncada – a former leader in the Medellín Cartel who, after Escobar murdered her husband Kiko, led a breakaway cartel and allied with the Cali Cartel and Los Pepes; she is based on the real-life Dolly Moncada[12]
• Patrick St. Esprit as Colonel Lou Wysession – a Marine officer fighting against communism
• Luis Guzmán as Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha – founding member and former leader of the Medellín Cartel
• Juan Riedinger as Carlos Lehder – Lion's contact in the United States, tasked with distributing the cocaine
• André Mattos as Jorge Ochoa – founding member and former leader of the Medellín Cartel
• Roberto Urbina as Fabio Ochoa – a high-ranking member of the Medellín Cartel (Season 1)
• Ana de la Reguera as Elisa Álvarez[10] – the co-leader of guerrilla faction 19th of April Movement (M-19)
• Danielle Kennedy as Ambassador Noonan – a United States Ambassador deployed to Colombia under Ronald Reagan
• Thaddeus Phillips as Agent Owen – a CIA agent on the Colombia task force
• Ariel Sierra as Sureshot – one of Escobar's sicarios
• Carolina Gaitán as Marta Ochoa – the Ochoas' sister, who is kidnapped by M-19
• Laura Perico as Marina Ochoa – the Ochoas' sister, who has an affair with Escobar's cousin Gustavo
• Vera Mercado as Ana Gaviria – the wife of César Gaviria and the First Lady of Colombia

The first season received generally favorable reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes a review aggregator surveyed 45 reviews and judged 78% to be positive. The site reads, "Narcos lacks sympathetic characters, but pulls in the viewer with solid acting and a story that's fast-paced enough to distract from its familiar outline."[13] On Metacritic, Season 1 holds a score of 77 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "Generally favorable reviews".[14] IGN gave the first season a 7.8 out of 10 score calling it "Good" and reads "It's a true-to-life account, sometimes to a fault, of the rise of Pablo Escobar and the hunt that brought him down laced with stellar performances and tension-filled stand-offs. Its blend of archival footage reminds us that the horrors depicted really happened, but also manage to present an Escobar that is indefensible but frighteningly sympathetic."[15]

The season received generally positive reviews from many media outlets. Writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Tirdad Derakhshani reviewed the season positively, calling it "Intense, enlightening, brilliant, unnerving, and addictive, Narcos is high-concept drama at its finest."[16] The New York Post's, Robert Rorke said, "Catching Escobar then becomes an exciting and suspenseful story arc, and makes Narcos the first cool show of the new season."[17] Joshua Alston of The A.V. Club judged "Narcos is frequently funny and just stylized enough to amplify the entertainment value without minimizing the gravity of the subject matter. It’s an eminently bingeable show even as it makes a strong case for moderate consumption."[18] Television critic, Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter also reviewed the series positively saying, "The series begins to find its pacing not long after, and we see the strength of Moura’s acting, which to his credit never races, in the early going, toward over-the-top menace or the drug-lord cliches we're all used to at this point. Credit also the fact that Padilha brings a documentary feel to Narcos."[19]

Nancy deWolf Smith of The Wall Street Journal wrote, "The omniscient-narrator device works very well for a complex story spanning many years and varied sets of players."[20] Critic Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times said, "It’s built on sharp writing and equally sharp acting, as any good series needs to be."[21] The San Francisco Chronicle's David Wiegand wrote, "Virtually every performance is equal to the quality of the script, but Moura is especially compelling as he manipulates the seeming incongruities of Escobar’s character to heighten his aura of unpredictable menace.... Brancato does make one significant misstep by having the entire series heavily narrated by Murphy."[22] Chief TV critic Brian Lowry of Variety also lauded the series saying, "The sparely told project weaves together a taut, gripping narrative, in stark contrast with the flatness of its characters and color scheme. All told, this Gaumont production is the kind of binge-worthy TV addiction that Netflix was born to import."[23]

Some were more critical towards the show including chief television critic Mary McNamara of Los Angeles Times who wrote, "It's a grand if inconsistent experiment that, from the moment it opens with a definition of magic realism, wears its considerable ambitions on its sleeve."[24] New York Daily News's David Hinckley, moderately reviewed the season and said, "One of the strengths of Narcos is its refusal to paint anyone as purely good or bad."[25] Writing for IndieWire, Liz Shannon Miller said, "An unlikeable character, no matter the circumstances, remains unlikeable, but an unlikeable character trumps a bland blonde man whose position of authority appears to be his only really interesting character trait, no matter how much voice-over he utters."[26] Josh Bell of Las Vegas Weekly quipped, "Mostly the show is a breezy tour through history, sometimes informative but rarely affecting."[27]