Mrs. America / HBO
The premiere of the painful
The Glorias
reminds us how good this Dahvi Waller series is with an excellent Cate Blanchett.
And a Tracey Ullman.
And a Sarah Paulson.
And a Uzo Aduba.
And one...
A review of the American feminist revolution of the 70s focused on one of its greatest enemies: Phyllis Schafly, a woman who, in a tremendously shrewd way, Waller's series defends as one of the best symbols of what that movement asked for (and asks): voice and presence.
I Could Destroy You / HBO
Michaela Coel is one of the most relevant television voices of 2020 with a series of very specific approach (how do you overcome a violation?), A very risky development and an even more daring conclusion.
Coel writes and stars in this hypnotic descent into hell with a ... happy ending.
His message is very powerful and his series, a marvel.
Industry / HBO
Debtor of
The Wolf of Wall Street
and
Melrose Place
(Lena Dunham, director of its first episode, dixit), but also of the disgusting culture of competitiveness of
reality shows
, this series set in a financial company in the City of London and with a barely known cast it has been one of the surprises of the last part of the year.
Poison / Atresplayer
The Javis had already demonstrated with
Paquita Salas
their pulse (innate?) For comedy, but their series about the mythical Cristina Ortiz, is not.
Veneno
is a masterful game of mirrors between the mythical and media transsexual and her biographer, Valeria Vegas, supported by an unsurpassed trio of trans actresses, a solid narrative concept and a tone that no one controls better than Ambrossi and Calvo.
Riot control / Movistar +
Not another thing, but Isa Peña and Rodrigo Sorogoyen know how to handle (almost entirely) male distributions.
The one in the Movistar + series is perfect and fits like a glove into a fiction that, knowing how connected it is to reality, follows its own path.
Addictive like few series of this 2020,
Anti-Riot
is a clear example of a series that puts the characters ahead of the adventures.
What good series do.
The Mandalorian (T2) / Disney +
There could be doubts with the first season (also broadcast in Spain in 2020), but not with the second installment of the first live action series in the Star Wars universe.
The journey of the Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal, in principle) with and in search of his green and adorable godson is a pure and classic adventure for all audiences.
The Mandalorian
reaches heights of emotional and visual wonder that it didn't need to succeed and that it has nevertheless given us.
The Great / Starzplay
Tony McNamara, screenwriter of
The Favorite
, turns Catherine the Great of Russia (Elle Fanning) into a spoiled little girl ... and a survivor.
Pedro (Nicholas Hoult) is also to feed him apart in this hilarious period satire full of wit and cruelty.
The Crown / Netflix
The fourth installment in Peter Morgan's series about Elizabeth II of England is many things: the farewell to its second cast, the razor-sharp portraits of Lady Di (Emma Corrin) and Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson), the confirmation that Helena Bonham Carter is a superb actress and the undeniable fact that her character, Princess Margaret, is perhaps the best of an already splendid series.
Challenge me / Netflix
Is your argument worthy of that genius that is @pelidetarde?
Yes. Is
Rétame
a disturbing analysis of the predatory behavior of an adult on a teenager?
As well.
And with an interesting twist: in
Rétame
both figures are female.
Double complication from which Megan Abbott, who adapts her own novel to the screen, comes out more than gracefully.
From elsewhere / AMC, Amazon Prime Video
Jason Segel's very Martian series is what Michel Gondry could have done if he had not opted for the bad vibes of
Kidding
(and Jim Carrey).
The surreal gymkhana of a group of people in search of happiness is, in Segel's hands, a series as rare as it is charming.
Really pretty.
Devs / HBO
Alex Garland's (
Ex Machina
,
Anhiliation
)
films
rarely take prisoners: their bombastic premises are always
pushed
to their last consequences.
In his first series, a reflection on time, mortality and transcendence (that's nothing), Garland does not submit either.
That makes
Devs
a fiction as special as it is heavy to digest.
Failed?
Maybe as a round story, but never as a concept.
Normal People / Starzplay
Sally Rooney's novel conveyed feelings and sensations that were very difficult to put into words.
The miniseries that adapts it also manages to do the book justice.
An interesting twist on the classic coming-of-age story tinged with sexual discovery and inter-class tale.
The Good Fight (T4) / Movistar +
The series derived from the now legendary
The Good Wife
began with a jug of cold water turned into a joke: Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 election made Diane Lockhart's (Christine Baranski) day bitter.
The last season of the series begins just the other way around, proposing a parallel universe in which Hillary won.
Another meta-all pirouette of the highly intelligent and sly fiction of the King marriage, perhaps the best television scriptwriters of today.
Insecure (T4) / HBO
In the gray and uncertain spring of 2020 we were able to enjoy the hyper-colored and, in its own way, hyperoptimistic series by Issa Rae.
That of the African-American actress and screenwriter is such a personal fiction (the tribulations of a young black woman in today's Los Angeles) that it is much more universal and empathetic than many supposedly more, ahem, inclusive series.
Look what you've done (T3) / Movistar +
But for recognizable, what Berto Romero tells in his comedy about fatherhood.
And about many other things.
The three seasons of
Look what you have done
have been, each in its own year, the best Spanish television comedy.
It's hard to believe that Berto and Eva Ugarte are not a couple in real life.
Look what you've done is the
Spanish
Catastrophe
.
Major words.
The Clutter You Leave / Netflix
There are no guilty pleasures and there are series that everyone talks about, if only for a couple of weeks.
A
lot has been said about
Carlos Montero (
Elite
).
And Viruca (Bárbara Lennie).
And the one that Viruca bundles in a Galicia that is not less claustrophobic because it is contemporary.
El Palmar de Troya / Movistar +
As it happens to us with
Death in Leon
, it is difficult for a fiction, no matter how wild it may be, to overcome the most extreme Celtiberian realities.
The sect raised by Pope Clement is one of them.
Israel del Santo (
Conquistadores Adventum
) enters the delirious Palmarian world, a universe where sordid drama coexists with Fellinian comedy, religious fervor with garlic prawns and misery with misery painted in gold.
Homeland / HBO
It had to be good yes or yes.
And it had to be done yes or yes.
The television adaptation of Fernando Aramburu's novel was news before it even existed, being responsible (Aitor Gabilondo, creator of
Living without permission
) or location (HBO Spain).
And it was done.
And it was good.
Luckily, because the other would have been the great missed opportunity for Spanish television in 2020.
Homeland (T8) / FOX
Claire Danes' spy series was fired with a final section dedicated 100% to those who had not left the series at any time.
If his first season was the sensation of the year of its premiere (2012), his coda, in the eighth installment, deserves to be remembered as an elegant, emotional and very well written gift.
That's what it has to do with a series that we have been doing for almost a decade: say goodbye well.
Quiz / Movistar +
This British miniseries would be worth it just to see Matthew McFayden change the register and, after conquering us as the petty careerist Tom of
Succession
, playing a gray and mediocre man who, through a TV contest, becomes an enigma.
Based on a real case, that of the supposed fixation of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
British,
Quiz
is a mini-wonder directed by Stephen Frears, one of those filmmakers who DOES understand that directing series is an art unto itself.
Special mentions:
El collapso / Filmin / AMC
: Due to its theme, that of the French collective Les Parasites would be an insultingly opportunistic series.
It is not, because it was made in 2019. Neither opportunistic nor as sophisticated as it wants us to believe: beyond its stylistic bet (the sequence shot) and its premise (a collapse of civilization that no longer seems so catastrophic), this fiction Shot to avoid appearing so at all costs is just a curious project whose strength lies in its unitary and clear message.
Because sometimes the lack of subtext is the best possible subtext.
HIT / TVE
: Should a public network justify its series beyond the mere success of audiences?
My answer is yes.
That does not mean that channels like TVE should bet everything on a didactic, instructive or (attention: abused word) good-natured production.
The
HIT
.
by Joaquín Oristrell is nothing of the kind, but a series capable of awakening a debate as necessary as it is also abused: that of education.
And give Daniel Grao prizes now, please, thank you.
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