I prefer not to write on TV. It bothers me that someone who makes television talks about others who do the same thing. But you don’t have to be so squeamish either. And even less so if what you want is to speak well and on top of that you are dealing with the competition. It’s not very common to praise the competition. Many professionals belong to some media group, public or private, and we normally only talk about our own. We invite each other, we recommend each other, we date each other and so our worlds become smaller and smaller.
I was trying to write this article on Thursday, which had another title and another topic, when I received a WhatsApp. “Are you watching about Milá with Maruja Torres?” It was a very vintage message: they invited me to watch a television program at the same time it was being broadcast, like when my mother saw The Dynamic Duo coming out, and she ran to call her friend Antonieta of hers. “Turn on the TV, baby” and she hung up. They didn’t need anything else.
At another time in my life I would have been eagerly awaiting that premiere, sitting on the couch at my parents’ house, watching TV and recording it on VHS. Like when I saw the first We Want to Know or Life in a Xip or The Moon or The House Through the Window. I still love TV, but I think I’ve lost some hope after waiting so many times for something new and being disappointed a few times.
I listened to WhatsApp and put on Milá, who was returning to TVE after 20 years. For a moment the TV smelled like something else. She smelled new, and at the same time the smell was familiar. It smelled like when TV was already the fool’s errand but it maintained its prestige. She smelled like a dining room heated with a two-bar stove, like farigola soup with bread, but also like Yatekomo in the microwave and Cortado with oat milk.
The legendary Mercedes Milá premiered a program in duet with the revelation of the public channel in recent years, Inés Hernand. What could go wrong? Well, nothing, because the guest was also Maruja Torres and later the designer Palomo Spain arrived. Interesting people saying interesting things, with which you learn, and at the same time you are entertained and laugh. Without tension or slogans written by others.
Nobody explains the dynamics of the program to you, because it is not necessary. No section masks or tunes enter. Everything flows like be water my friend. People 20 years old get together who have no idea who Lola Flores is, and people 55 and up who don’t know anything about Taylor Swift. Hence the name: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
The same week that I had to explain to my son who Terry Venables was, I found out thanks to Hernand that the fashionable disco in Madrid is called Fabrik or that the king emeritus is called King Emirate. La Milá gave way to herself in an archive video with an art that you have to be La Milá to know how to do. And we see a whole Camilo José Cela flirting with the presenter, explaining her anal arts to absorb water. Milá, dancing around the set, is seen proud of her moment with the Nobel Prize, until Hernand, with his eyes raised in the method, lets her know that the man was being treated like a wine carton.
Despite the desire to bring together several generations on the couch at home, it was not a great audience, because almost nothing is a great thing anymore. Maruja Torres, speaking about herself, stated: the pleasure of writing and the pleasure you give the reader to read are being forgotten. That is exactly what Milá and Hernand offered: the pleasure of making TV and the pleasure you give to the viewer who watches it. What a pleasure. May it last.
