Miguel Bosé was filming Garofano Rosso and Giovannino in Italy when, seeing that his career was going from strength to strength, he received an offer to transfer his talent to music. His father, Dominguín, was his first detractor, upset at the artistic drift of his son. Bárbara Rey, on the other hand, allowed herself to be seduced by Ángel Cristo, the tamer and businessman, despite running a circus in low hours and with alcoholic excesses as a result of the death of his first wife, the trapeze artist Renata Tanton. And Nacho Vidal, a boy without a job or benefit, found an ideal job according to his huge penis and passion for sex, when he opted for a gig at the Bagdad club in Barcelona with his girlfriend, Sara Bernat, who was a prostitute. . They cannot be more disparate professionals and artists, nor can their trajectories be directly linked. But they do have a common link: their coincidence in a Spanish television obsessed with careers, scandals and toxic relationships of the members of their show business.
This trend in television fiction can possibly be linked to a work in question: Veneno by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi. Yes, the biopic is one of the most prolific audiovisual resources (Fosse/Verdon, Julia, Pistol, The dropout, WeCrashed and we will stop naming examples because we would never end) but the artistic and sentimental couple of the Javis revitalized the genre with a kitsch, profound work, with interpretations as surprising as they were inspired, who knew how to structure the discourse based on anecdote and which captivated both critics and the public, drawing attention to Atresplayer Premium, Atresmedia’s content platform. With these results, it was inevitable that this service would repeat the play with Christ and the King by Daniel Écija, a veteran of Iberian television with titles such as Family Doctor, Red Eagle or Los Serrano.
The biographical cocktail was forceful with an adulterous relationship, the one that King Juan Carlos had with the star of the Transition, and another tortuous one, that of Bárbara Rey with Ángel Cristo, who built a family and in which she suffered ill-treatment. With Belén Cuesta and Jaime Lorente in the main roles, she had another claim to repeat the play of Cristina Ortiz, who consolidated her status in the cultural, social and television imaginary after her death thanks to the perspective provided by the work. . Was this Cristo y Rey up to her predecessor in Atresplayer? No, for a matter of personality: following in the footsteps of a fiction as overwhelming as Venom with such similar ingredients (remember that Cristina had her share of toxic relationships and disclosures) with such a conventional look has her risks. The conversation generated by Cristo y Rey, concentrated in the first episodes and the representation of the relationship between Bárbara and Juan Carlos, is possibly an indicator of their limited ability to penetrate the high spheres of television.
The next to appear was Miguel Bosé, who had the peculiarity of reaching the international market earlier with Bosé than in Spain: the consequence of SkyShowtime arriving late on the peninsula. Who are responsible? Nacho Faerna, Ángeles González-Sinde, Isabel Vázquez and Boris Izaguirre, who know the artist directly or at least know people from his close circle. The plots of the first episodes focus on hot topics: the problematic relationship between the Almodóvar boy and his bullfighter father, his skills for flirting with both sexes, or his courage in exhibiting a model of masculinity that was unconventional for the time, embracing dance. and color as a business card as a singer. José Pastor, who plays him in his most youthful facet, is one of the revelations of the season, while Iván Sánchez lends his physique to the adult version of Bosé who yearns for fatherhood.
To what extent a figure increasingly controversial for his opinions will whitewash (one day he criticizes vaccines, another defends that the transition offered more freedom than the present) is something that the series will demonstrate as the episodes progress. The season, for the moment, is correct, with some budgetary deficiencies when it comes to taking advantage of the scenarios of the life of Miguel Bosé and the shadow of Luis Miguel, the series both in structure and in the theme or the way of claiming the catalog from the singer. Watching the first episode involves looking for Linda on the preferred streaming music platform while José Pastor is visualized transmitting the energy, vitality and debauchery of the singer in his youth.
And, like who doesn’t want the thing, the most brazen bet came last, this past Sunday, with Nacho, the biopic about another star with a career as stellar as debated: protected by the Italian porn icon Rocco Siffredi, he became a mainstream figure with the Mediaset reality ecosystem, visible activist of the trans movement (he has a trans daughter) and right now he is being investigated for his alleged involvement in a homicide. With Teresa Fernández-Valdés, Gema R. Neira and Diego Sotelo, from the Bambú factory responsible for titles such as Velvet, Las chicas del cable or Fariña, Nacho’s keys are two: the cockiness of an unleashed Martiño Rivas and the nerve of the direction of David Pinillos devoted to the music, the movement, the impact, the self-awareness of the character they are portraying.
The influence of Veneno is so notorious that, if it were not broadcast on Atresplayer, it would possibly even be offensive (and, curiously, at first it was an original Lionsgate production, which, when it stopped operating in Spain, sold the series to Atresmedia, with who Bambú has worked on so many occasions). About this fictional Nacho Vidal, for the record, there is a question: if the series has something to say or if it has a stimulating dramatic voice capable of building a story beyond Nacho Vidal’s anecdotes and vital decisions. But, between so much cocaine, fucking, performances on the verge of exaggeration (which are exactly what the artistic proposal calls for) and a dizzying montage that seems to move to the rhythm of bakalao music, perhaps we will be too distracted and entertained (which is good ) enough to notice.
