‘Garcia!’ It is HBO Max’s big bet in Spain for this year and it passes the test by far. We comment on what the first chapters of the series, which will debut on October 28th, offer of themselves.
Of – October 19, 2022
What if Captain America frozen in ice for decades is, in reality, a Franco super secret agent who wakes up in a Spain he doesn’t recognize? Apparently, because after all, in the envy of him, corruption and crooked maneuvers to rise to power, not much has changed either. We could say that he starts from there Garcia!the series of HBO Max adapting a lauded comic by Luis Bustos and Santiago García.
Those responsible for the adaptation are Carlos de Pando and Sara Antuña, the same ones who supervised another adaptation of a work by García (The neighbour) which also gives a different look at what we mean by a superhero comic. If in the Netflix comedy they looked to a neighborhood vigilante, in the HBO Max adventure they focus on a completely anachronistic boy, someone out of his time who does not understand what is happening to him or to the country he thought he knew.
This initial dichotomy is represented in Garcia’s reluctant alliance with Antonia, a young journalist who speaks too fast, has a boyfriend who doesn’t dare introduce her to her father and who believes he is behind The Story of her budding career. The meeting of both in the first episode already gives the measure of what the series will be later on. The direction of Eugenio Mira is committed to promoting the sense of adventure and the more comic side, and there is a gag at the expense of those who are usually called “nostalgic” of Francoism that also advances that yes, the series will enter those gardens. It starts directly in the Valley of the Fallen.
This duo doomed to understand each other is very well embodied Francesco Ortiz (El Cid) y Veki Velilla (Real), which balance García’s stoicism and Antonia’s overflowing energy and end up finding the common ground they need to survive the adventure they embarked on. Because, of course, nothing is a coincidence. García’s past does not remain in 1961 and the current Spain presenting the series is totally divided politically between left and right, and on the verge of absolute chaos.
Garcia! he knows how to intertwine that situation (which is not so far from reality) with the vicissitudes and the plot that his two protagonists have to unravel. Things aren’t exactly what they seem and, as we learn more about where that secret agent is coming from, the series expands its world and pinpoints who really are the villains of the show.
In addition, the aroma of 1940s adventure series (which García himself would have seen in movies when he was younger) and from superhero comics of the Golden Age, and has a very inspired cast to which, in addition to Ortiz and Velilla, Emilio Gutiérrez Caba stands out as the father of Antonia and Francisco Reyes as Garcia’s nemesis.
Garcia! He enjoys the twists and turns of his plot, with the contrast between Francoist Spain and the democratic Spain that García experiences all the time, with Antonia’s youthful enthusiasm and with the comments on current politics that creep in here and there. It is a very fun adventure. who wants the viewer to have fun too and who resolutely embraces all the contradictions and potentials that the original comic already contained.
