Reviewing the television premieres of 2020 I come across series that aimed high and fired wet gunpowder.

Series that were talked about more before its premiere than after

:

Guadagnino's

We are who we are

or the highly anticipated

Raised by Wolves

,

Hunters

or

Ratched

before they were cool.

Before we could see them, it is understood.

The news used to be the names that sustained them.

Then

with the launches came disappointments and indifference

.

The second is usually the usual reaction when we meet the first.

Years ago, the promotional power of an Al Pacino, a Ridley Scott, or, ahem, a Guadagnino, could have kept the conversation going about their series.

Now there is neither time nor material space for that luxury:

if the series turns out to be failed or weak, another premiere will take its place in the serial conversation.

And in this blog.

An interesting thing is happening

with

30 Coins

, which has to do with that "expectation effect" and at the same time, in some way, denies it:

Alex de la Iglesia's luxurious project for HBO is exactly what we expected from him;

his welcome, the one you could imagine.

Those of us who have been pointing out The Great Problem of the Basque director for years continue to do so;

those who jump blindly into his arms from

murderous Mirindas

continue to be faithful

and evangelists.

Plus a very curious third group: certain TV professionals, whether doing it or commenting on it, who, although publicly applaud the series, from inside they are aligned with a criticism that, precisely because it has been in force for many years, deserves to be rescued a one more time.

The cinema (and now I'm afraid that the series) by Alex de la Iglesia and Jorge Guerricaechevarría starts from very

powerful premises that it never leads to a successful conclusion.

Their "what wouldn't be cool ...?"

of gang talk, dragged into riotous and pyrotechnic developments, end up revealing themselves as mere occurrences incapable of being sustained over time.

If the six characters in Pirandello were looking for an author,

the dozens of characters in De la Iglesia and Guerricaechevarría, throughout many films and a series, beg for an ending that is not ridiculous.

30 Coins

is a hallucinated trip in the absolute literality of the two words

: trip because it is in permanent movement, hallucinated because elemental logic is not the engine of its advance.

The mystery baby turns into a giant baby.

Because that's cool.

And the giant baby mutates into an even more monstrous arthropod.

Because that's cooler.

And so everything.

That the mother of the bug is the immeasurable Carmen Machi is

a trap that De la Iglesia has also used for years

: in her stories the moments of magical brilliance of superlative interpreters often distract us from the implausibility of plots and twists.

The former advance because they must, the latter occur because of the above (the giant baby) we have already gotten tired.

Or rather, its creators have gotten tired.

As in

Las brujas de Zugarramurdi

or

Balada triste de trumpeta

,

many things happen

in

30 Coins

and practically all of them expire shortly after.

Perhaps there is no other option: if there is no film that can withstand so much accumulation of elements, how is a series going to do it (

American Horror Story: Asylum

was an exception).

No director or screenwriter is capable of tying up so many loose ends decently

.

For Alex de la Iglesia it is more operative to abandon them.

How?

Setting them on fire, setting them on fire on screen.

In

spectacular shots that, at times, forget that the staging is something more than proposing maximalist images

and that there is a producer willing to bear their expenses.

Wouldn't it be cool if the guy gets on the roof and the whole town is down to see if he throws the baby or not?

Yes, it would be cool.

And it's cool.

Who disputes that.

Also who will endure the several hours of fleeing forward from a fiction that trusts everything to that.

To be

an insane role-playing game between complicit laughter, private jokes and geek tributes.

Are those tributes cool?

Very much.

Do they compensate?

No.

There is no film by Alex de la Iglesia and Jorge Guerricaechevarría whose proposal has not led me to the cinema with the hope of ... I don't know ...

maybe reliving the experience of

The Day of the Beast

.

I think there are many of us who continue to hope that, between so much mascletá and so much joke, the universe of these two men, so attractive, so funny, so irreverent, will become

solid and adult scripts

.

Fine-tuned stories that, to shine superficially, do not need gigantic productions or unbreakable stars like Carmen Machi.

There is no film by Alex de la Iglesia and Jorge Guerricaechevarría whose proposal has not led me to the cinema with enthusiasm

and there is no film that has not taken me out of the room with a good anger.

Another souffle that deflates by itself, Alex?

It is fair to point out that in the first episode of

30 Coins

that does not happen.

It is a very long start (well over an hour) that,

despite its capricious arbitrariness, manages not to collapse

.

Of course that would be very serious, because at that time there would still be seven long hours of series ahead.

In the second, the endemic evils that we unfortunately expected begin to show off.

Wouldn't it be cool if

30 Monedas

didn't fall down the ravine of its own coolness?

Like

Raised by Wolves

,

Hunters

,

Ratched

and most likely

Tell Me Who I Am

,

30 Coins

could be one of those titles why bother with if nobody cares about them.

However, this is by definition a relevant series that we do have to talk about:

Alex de la Iglesia's first and HBO Spain's most tremendous production to date

.

In addition, its highly polarized and schizophrenic reception - which contrasts sharply with that of the very similar

Lovecraft Country

, by the way - deserves almost more reflection than the series itself:

sectarian fans versus haters that we really are not.

What wouldn't I give so that watching

30 Coins

was my favorite time of the week.

But this new AlexDeLaIglesiada doesn't even shoot wet gunpowder, but rather a mixture of blood, sweat, glitter, chistorra, dolls and heels at the wearer.

You try to kill someone with that.

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