The experience of watching series is not the same now as when there were not so many channels and platforms competing in what is now called the content market. Television fiction was a weekly event that rewarded perseverance, which allowed the characters to be one of the family, with a certain rhythm and codes. They were not always looking for excellence but they were looking for entertainment not based on binge eating.
And, while the greater offering and improvements in creativity and production standards are steps forward that we do not want to leave behind, from time to time we want to see that more relaxed fiction model. Here are five current series, some of them brilliant, that in some way return to the fiction of before:
The beginning of Poker Face episodes always feature unknown characters and places. The viewer always spends the first few minutes seeing a particular character dynamic, how someone ends up murdered, and who is responsible. Then, the camera focuses on Charlie (Natasha Lyonne), a woman with the gift of detecting any lie and who has the bad luck to walk through places where corpses are always found. It is the series that, as we already indicated, seems like an updated cross between Columbo and Murder Wrote.
Poker face is what happens when someone with the power of Rian Johnson (Daggers in the Back) can allow himself the whim of paying homage and having fun with a historical television mold. The touch and originality of the episodes, always well woven, will be a treasure for those who miss their references, with the virtue that precisely takes this format to the next level. Without a doubt, one of the series of the year.
When Doctor in Alaska returned to our lives with the revival of the episodes, a section of the public and the media ended up exhausted from applauding so much. The nostalgia factor came into play and that Doctor in Alaska was a good series, but also the need for a refuge, for a quiet place. But there are series today that have this same vocation, even with the starting point of “city doctor settles in a town that does not fit with his lifestyle.”
Love Is Like Cha Cha is the best example: a cute romantic comedy about a dentist, Yoon Hye-jin (Shin Min-a), who finds herself banished from the profession in Seoul and tries to open a practice in a fishing village. There she soon has chemistry with Hong Du-sik (Kim Seon-ho), the town handyman who helps all the neighbors for minimum wage (and at his express request). She is as predictable as she is welcoming.
When The Office landed on American television with its remake starring Steve Carell, a tough competitor arrived for the traditional sitcom with a live audience. It was 2005. And, since then, the decline of free-to-air television has led to fewer and fewer popular comedies, the kind that establish themselves in the collective imagination based on laughter, millions of viewers and good reviews, and that also offer dozens (if not hundreds) of episodes. Luckily, Abbott School exists.
Quinta Brunson wrote a series for herself to star in: a comedy set in a public school in a humble neighborhood in Philadelphia. She is Janine, a teacher with always the most optimism, who clashes with the center’s most veteran workers like Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph), who has dominated her students, or Barbara (Lisa Ann Walter). She has aired 39 episodes waiting to produce her third season and has an Emmy for best script and another for best supporting actress for Ralph.
I will not defend this fiction as an example of quality but it does have something of the same old fiction: those series that in the United States were designed for primetime but here could be broadcast in the afternoon in summer or at the end of primetime, as if It wanted the viewer to have a relaxing story to fall asleep to.
Created by Sheryl J. Anderson and based on the novels by Sherryl Woods, Sweet Magnolias centers on three friends. Maddie (JoAnna Garcia), a mother of three, has just been abandoned by a younger woman and is trying to get back into the job market, Dana Sue (Brooke Elliot) is the cook at Sullivan’s restaurant, and Helen (Heather Headley) is a lawyer who doesn’t. She has been able to fulfill her dream of being a mother. The three decide to create a spa and, well, deal with dramas so intense that one can follow them with their eyes closed.
Carlos de Pando, Sara Antuña, Gabriel Ochoa and Héctor Beltrán must be recognized for their ability to recreate the usual Spanish fiction adapted to streaming with Without Traces. Desi (Carolina Yuste) and Cata (Camila Sodi) are two laid-off cleaners who, when they receive the job of cleaning a wealthy family’s mansion, don’t even hesitate. When they are there, however, they discover that there is a body and that, if they do not watch, they will end up accused of murder or murdered like the victim.
Without Traces is a black comedy and a neo-western that, with two very well chosen actresses and with the right register, returns the viewer to the general comedy but saving them those extra minutes that lowered the final result.
