Alberto Rey

Updated Sunday, February 4, 2024-9:31 p.m.

  • Greyhounds Pijerío and sugar

During the development process of

Galgos

Succession

will have been mentioned

as many times as in the articles that talk about this new Movistar+ series. Here, for example. And nothing happens. That one of your models is

one of the best series in history

is nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing to hide. Television fiction is a market of trends, of leaders and followers. During the next seasons we will see more followers of

Succession

. And nothing happens.

Galgos

changes the Roys' multinational leisure company for the Somarribas' food company. They are the owners and directors of Galgo. They make cookies, breakfast cereals and buns. Like any family business, Galgo is a peculiar company. To freely quote

Tolstoy

, family businesses are each unhappy in their own way. Otherwise they tend to be, at least on television, quite similar: rich, extensive, with comedic and slightly hypocritical satellites. Breeding ground for highly entertaining and glamorous series.

Greyhounds

are both things. Written by Francisco Kosterlitz, Clara Roquet, Lucía Carballal and Pablo Remón and with a very colorful cast, this drama

delivers exactly what it promises

. Its originality lies in not desperately trying to be original. There Galgos is, in its own way, humble: it knows what series it is and cares about being good at it. But being humble is not being poor.

The Somarriba are neither of those two things. Because even the apparent decency with which Carmina (Adriana Ozores), the matriarch, conducts herself, she is cracked. We know more about the duplicity of her husband Gonzalo (Óscar Martínez) and her daughter Blanca (Patricia López Arnaiz). And more than we will know, since

Galgos

takes advantage of the episodic structure very well. And the weekly broadcast. Like

Succession

, this is a series that

begs to be watched week by week

, a fiction that gives the viewer the masochistic pleasure of being left wanting more at the end of each episode.

In

Galgos

there are family parties where little things happen (like in

Succession

), private jets (like in

Succession

), a slightly stupid son (

Jorge Usón, magnificent

) and very nice clothes. There are also very Spanish references and a localization and artistic direction work that

anchors it to the economic and aesthetic reality of our country

. I believe in few families from Spanish series more than the Somarriba family, even though it is made up of faces with a lot of their own identity. There

Succession

had an advantage: its actors were nowhere near as well-known in the world as Adriana Ozores, Luis Bermejo or Patricia López Arnáiz are in Spain. Like the very vindictive

Intimidad

(which also featured López Arnáiz, by the way),

Galgos

is

aspirational and recognizable

. Addictive like the much maligned sugar in Galgo products and worthy as only the powerful mother of a "lifelong" family knows how to be.

Greyhounds

is a lifelong series. And that, sometimes, is exactly what we want to see. That's already Adriana Ozores in charge, of course.