Step by step, the offering offered by streaming platforms is increasingly similar to free-to-air linear television. Audiovisual content based on series and movies is also giving way to other formats that until now seemed to be part only of traditional television channels.
This same season, viewers have been able to see on a platform like Prime Video a format of great entertainment and proven success like Operación Triunfo while platforms like Netflix are testing sports formulas (the Rafa Nadal-Carlos Alcaraz duel) and HBO Max will try its luck next season with the adventure reality show Peking Express.
And this week Disney was the platform that surprised with the announcement that it will incorporate another format that until now was exclusive to the open format to its content: the daily series. Return to Las Sabinas will have the honor of being the first daily broadcast series of a streaming service produced in Spain.
The platform plans to premiere the fiction next fall with daily broadcast, from Monday to Friday, of the 70 40-minute episodes that make up the first season. The intention is to premiere an episode every morning at eight and its broadcast would therefore last for 14 weeks.
The series has been launched together with Diagonal (Banijay Iberia), the production company that just this week celebrated its 25 years as a reference for Spanish fiction. She was responsible for Amar en tiempo revueltos, the production that reinvented the daily broadcast series on linear television, Amar es para siempre or the recently released Sueños de Libertad. You have plenty of experience in this field.
This new Disney bet is directed by Jordi Frades (La catedral del mar, Los herederos de la tierra) and has been shot in natural interiors and exteriors in Riells del Fai, Sant Andreu de Llavaneres and Sant Vicenç de Montalt, located first in the Vallés Oriental and the last two in the Maresme. The cast is made up of familiar faces to viewers such as Andrés Velencoso, Celia Freijeiro, Ángela Molina, Nancho Novo, Olivia Molina, Natalia Sánchez, Miquel Fernández, María Casal, Marta Calvó and Julia Carnero.
Disney has also advanced the synopsis of Return to Las Sabinas, which will begin when the Molina sisters, after many years without seeing each other, receive a call that makes them return to their hometown, Manterana, to attend to their father’s health problems. An unexpected return that means reconnecting with the life and loves they tried to forget. “Settled on their family farm, Las Sabinas, they will face secrets from the past that will change their lives forever,” the platform advances.
Jaume Banacolocha, Ignasi Serra and Jordi Frades himself are the executive producers of this series created by Eulalia Carrillo and which has Jordi Calafí and Nacho Pérez de la Paz, among others, as scriptwriters, and with Marta Creus as production director.
For Sofía Fábregas, vice president of original production at Disney in Spain, the project represents “a fundamental piece within the company’s strategy” and highlights that “we have chosen classic melodrama because of the strong roots it has in the audience, but modernizing it, with a premium bill.”
