Last Monday, the shooting of Alpha Malesthe new series from the creators of the one that is coming, began in the afternoon and ended later still, around five in the morning on Tuesday. One of the mansions in the luxurious Las Lomas urbanization, in Boadilla del Monte (Madrid), is hosting one of the last days of filming (the recording ended this Friday) of the 10 half-hour episodes that will make up the comedy with which the brothers Alberto and Laura Caballero debut on Netflix with an original fiction —There is no one living here, another of his creations, has been in the platform’s catalog for almost a year with a very good reception from the public—. While a very pregnant Laura Caballero directs Fernando Gil and María Hervás inside, the rest of the main cast meets in the garden, next to the pool and the trampoline, to chat about a series that they had not been able to talk about until now . Most haven’t even been able to tell anyone what series they were working on. They are also not very clear about what they can count (very little) and what not (almost everything).
The distribution of Alpha Males It is made up of Fele Martínez, Fernando Gil, María Hervás, Raúl Tejón, Kira Miró, Gorka Otxoa, Paula Gallego, Virginia Rodríguez and Raquel Guerrero. The four men play four friends who see their comfortable lives turned upside down as they lose the privileges that being men used to bring them. Women will be the ones who promote these changes and force them to face their new reality.
Since you can hardly talk about the argument, the conversation takes other courses. They all claim to have experienced situations and have had debates such as those raised by the series, for whose premiere there is still no scheduled date. “We are in a time when the feminist revolution, because the revolution will be feminist or it will not be, is here to stay. As my grandmother would say, either you acclimatize or you aclijodes. There are a lot of people who are fucking because they don’t want to acclimatize”, says Raúl Tejón, whose character is one of those who shows the most opposition to these role changes. “It seems that when doing comedy you are not telling deep things, but in reality the series talks about important things, with humor, but it will be a mirror in which to see oneself reflected”, adds Raquel Guerrero. “Obviously, there are some twists to it, because it’s a comedy and some situations are exaggerated. But it has a tone that is not at all eccentric. It has very funny spikes and some of the relationships are strained, but it’s a pretty accurate portrayal of this moment of impasse that is lived before finishing taking the step”, completes Fele Martínez.
Faced with the wild humor, bordering on the astracanada, of the one that is coming and the whitest shade of The village (both, Telecinco series), Gorka Otxoa describes Alpha Males as “a naturalistic comedy, camera on the shoulder, in natural locations, very realistic, very close”. “There is no grotesque, but there is no mercy with any of the characters,” adds Raúl Tejón. Fernando Gil, already incorporated into the conversation, takes the floor: “I think that the difference with other productions of Contubernio [la productora de Alberto y Laura Caballero] is that it is a comedy more of a situation than of characters. The characters are not so extreme, playing farce. Here they are more everyday. And the filming in real locations gives it a more cinematographic point. It could be a version of Woody Allen that has Madrid as background instead of Manhattan”.
From Manhattan to Madrid
Alberto Caballero also mentions the New York director when he explains why they wanted Madrid to be the backdrop. “We saw that it was a clearly urban series, and we came up and said ‘if Woody Allen loves New York and is the protagonist of his things, our city is Madrid’. We thought it would be nice to shoot in places that had some meaning to us. We shot, for example, in Las Vistillas, a park where our grandparents used to take us when we were little. We wanted specific places and locations that had charm”, says the writer and producer. In addition to Madrid, the team shot some plots in Ibiza.
For the two brothers, shooting in Madrid without setting foot on a set, in natural locations, has been a new and complex experience. “We wanted to show how beautiful Madrid is, it is a very cool city, and Barcelona has always been given more prominence. But looking for locations has been very hard, getting the permits, fitting everything together…”, says Laura Caballero. Added to this are the night shoots, the unexpected demonstrations, the actors who tested positive for covid… “As they say in Shakespeare in Loveeverything in the end comes out, but how is it achieved it’s a mysteryAlbert jokes.
Now that he has been able to see finished episodes, Alberto Caballero is finally totally calm about the series. “When you do a new thing, you imagine it and you look for actors that fit… but no one has a clue how it’s going to turn out until you start seeing things. I have been very calm all the time, but there is always some uncertainty because you have to get it right. This is a very important moment for us because we jumped from conventional television, with all its good and bad, to platforms. And we didn’t want to screw it up at the worst time.”
Both highlight the leap in aesthetic quality that this production entails. “In comedy, it seems that the aesthetic part could look cheap and nothing happened. Making a comedy that is beautiful, that is cared for, with locations, is wonderful. Comedy had always been the little sister”, says Laura Caballero. “This also has a part to dignify comedy. The platforms have made it possible to homogenize the historically most ambitious productions and comedies, raising everything to a higher level in the aesthetic part, ”adds her brother.
With Alpha Males, the Caballero brothers wanted to do something very different from their previous creations. Are you afraid of the reaction of the public that can expect something similar to what has already been seen? “In reality, it scares us more that it looks alike and that we realize that we only know how to do one thing,” says Alberto. The actors clear doubts on this matter. “They control the comedy that you don’t see, they are in their element,” says Fele Martínez. “They have a very measured time, when the breaks have to go, when to give it more speed, when you have to prepare the gag…”, adds Raúl Tejón. “It is the key to comedy and what differentiates it from drama, doing it for real but with the exact rhythm so that it fits and makes people laugh”, completes Kira Miró. “Time is a tyrant in comedy. If you go too far, the gag collapses, and if you fall short, it doesn’t come”, concludes Fernando Gil. “It scares me more that people see the chapters very quickly,” reflects Alberto Caballero. “That gives me tremendous anguish”, agrees his sister, “with what it costs to make a series!”.
Three shoots in parallel
Alberto and Laura Caballero have three series running at the moment: The one that is coming, the town Y Alpha Males. And during the last two months, the filming of the three have coincided in time. “We are at a point where things have gotten out of hand. On the new sets of the one that is coming I come across people I don’t know”, says Alberto Caballero. “We rushed Males to have all the scripts before starting to shoot and to pick up cruising speed. At the same time, we started the new season of the one that is coming, which looks more like a spin-off that a continuation of the series. And then The village, which has the advantage that it goes very well on its own because we have Roberto Monge who is a director who has been with us from the beginning, the writers are quite seasoned… it is the most continuous series of the three”, reviews the producer.
While Alpha Males has finished shooting this week, the one that is coming will do it in September and The village in October. “I don’t know how many production companies there are in Spain with three series at the same time, I don’t think many, and none as small as us,” laughs Caballero.
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