See if Movistar Plus+ trusts 'Muertos SL', that the new fiction by the Caballero brothers, responsible for titles like 'La que se cerca' or 'Machos alfa', has already filmed its second season without the first having even been released . Starring Carlos Areces, his fourth time under the orders of the Caballeros, but his first time as the protagonist, the series will hit the platform on April 4, at a rate of two episodes per week.
The story begins when Gonzalo Torregrosa, owner and founder of the funeral home that bears his name, dies. Dámaso Carrillo (Areces) was until now his right-hand man and he is convinced that the best thing for everyone is for him to assume command, but Nieves (Ascen López), the widow of the deceased, will be the one to take charge of the company, helped by his useless and enthusiastic son-in-law, Chemi (Diego Martín), a marketing expert who has not hesitated to hang a huge photograph of Steve Jobs next to his work desk. From there, betrayals and trips will be the order of the day.
«It was very simple. They asked us what we wanted to do and they gave it to us so much… We wanted to develop a series in a work environment, which was something we had not touched on before, for half an hour, in a funeral home and they told us how cool,” he summarizes. Alberto Caballero during the launch of the proposal, in a central hotel in Madrid. “Who could resist this sweetie?” Areces adds sardonically.
Indeed, fiction takes advantage of the setting of the funeral home to talk about what happens in any family SME. «In reality, the Spanish business fabric is made up of 80% of this type of small companies, which do not exceed 10 or 20 workers, and that fits a lot with a suburban funeral home. Unlike a fiction like 'Succession', we were interested in talking about the miseries of everyday life, about that person who goes to work and who hates his partner, a lower profile and more Spanish », continues Alberto Caballero.
Without a doubt, one of the most surprising aspects of the series are the sets that have been built to carry out the production, with two enormous sets of 1,500 and 1,200 meters. In the first, located at street level, there is the reception, the cafeteria, the multi-denominational room and two wakes – one mid-range, the other more VIP – with their burial mounds, as well as the service corridors through which employees circulate. transporting the corpses.
On the second set, located two floors below, that feeling of reality disappears due to the presence of two pillars. In return, the set has all types of rooms: the offices, the office for lunch and rest, the corner dedicated to the exhibition of the different ranges of coffins, the crematory oven, the spectacular thanatopraxy room, with all the royal props. -they even have the needles used to sew mouths- and the enormous office of the late Torregrosa, built with noble woods
Laura Caballero states that the sets have turned out so well that the first days the technical team “entered slowly” and some “even crossed themselves.” So much so that even the courier services turned around when they saw the funeral home logo on the outside, realizing that the address was wrong.
human miseries
Asked by a journalist about whether human misery has limits, Alberto Caballero responds bluntly: «It will, but we have not discovered them. I think the most thorny, most current or most conflictive topics in society are the most comedyable. From the point of view of the creators, we have to fight from humor and comedy in favor of freedom of expression and to be able to discuss practically any topic and fight against those who are offended and people who enter networks looking for a way to be offended. , create a hastagh and try to cancel someone.
A frame from the series.
He supports his reasoning by also ensuring that “it has taken us many centuries of evolution to be able to say what we think in a civilized manner and even make a joke that is not funny and expose ourselves to someone being offended and managing it, but we are linearizing ourselves around the 'mainstream' thinking, political correctness and goodness, and comedy has a very important role fighting against that. “If we all continue to adore Carlos Areces, the comedy has no end,” Laura Caballero completes next to her, while Areces complains that they always make an example of him when talking about human miseries.
Alberto Caballero does not hide that 'A two meters under the ground', the HBO fiction that addressed the daily life of a family that runs a funeral home, is one of his favorite series, but 'Muertos SL' is not seen in its tone that advanced around family traumas. And yet it is true that “in the end we spend more time with our co-workers than with our families and they become an involuntary and often unwanted family and that gives rise to a lot of comedy.” In his opinion, if you have to look for a series that is most similar to it, it is 'The Office', even though it is not a mockumentary.
Rocío Carrasco, future extra as deceased?
Areces carries the weight of a very choral production in which Amaia Salamanca plays the person who was a Dámaso scholarship recipient and now, from the competition, “I want to go over her head,” she explains. At his side, Diego Martín points out that the problem of giving life to characters as extreme as Chemi, that innovator in a field as immobile as that of death, from the absurd, is that “in the end his ideas don't seem so crazy to me” .
And be careful because many friends of the Caballero brothers have already made the pertinent request to appear in the extras fiction as deceased. “Rocío Carrasco has asked me to come out as dead,” reveals Laura Caballero. It's not that easy. Her brother remembers that in 'The one that is coming' they sent an actor who had to play dead and had a tick in his eyes. “We solved it by putting sunglasses on him.”
#Coworkers #involuntary #unwanted #family
