“La Mesías,” from “Veneno” creators Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, drinks deep from Catholic tradition from its very title — literally, “The Female Messiah” — to iconography and focus on faith.
Another awaited Movistar+ series, “The Left-Handed Son,” created by “The Plague” screenwriter Rafael Cobos, was presented to the press in July against a spectacular backdrop taking in, just across a waterway, Seville’s iconic Torre de Oro and, a little further away, the Giralda bell tower of Seville’s Cathedral.
In line with platform production trends the world over, rather than playing down local elements, Movistar+ is playing them up. For the Telefonica SVOD/pay TV player in Spain, this has been a longterm philosophy, reaching back to its earliest series in 2017.
No big European SVOD player has insisted as much as Movistar+ on capturing the hot button issues (“Riot Police,” “Simple”), history (“The Plague,” “La Fortuna”), culture (“Spanish Shame”), traumas (“The Invisible Line”) and landscapes (“Félix”) of its local market.
Yet no other Spanish SVOD player has its international ambitions, seen in co-productions with AMC (“La Fortuna”) Telemundo (“Tell Me Who I Am”), Studiocanal (“En el corredor de la muerte”), and Portocabo, Arte France and Atlantique Productions (“Hierro”).
There is no contradiction, says Domingo Corral, Movistar+ director of original programming.
“The best TV is local TV, localized and reflecting specific settings, their culture, traditions and people, which gives series authenticity, a sense of truth,” he says, citing “The Sopranos’” and New Jersey and New York and “Breaking Bad” and Albuquerque, N.M.
Likewise, “The Left-Handed Son” captures two Sevilles, that of its iconic monuments and its far lesser known working-class districts and outerradius.
Was Cobos, born in Seville, under any obligation to forefront local elements? No, he answers, but it’s “a natural impulse for creators to look for what you know and enjoy another space, nature and reality.”
Depicting the two Sevilles, Cobos will use the same realist tone — though more “amiable” — of his work with Alberto Rodríguez, from 2005’s “7 Virgins” through to 2015 Goya best picture winner “Marshland,” “La Peste” and now “Prison 77” and an episode in “Offworld.”
Yet, to engage international audiences, some elements in a series have to be universal. Corral cites two: “Emotional conflicts and production levels.”
Backed by Telefonica, which posted €39.2 billion ($38.5 billion) revenues in 2021, Movistar+ can step up to the plate financing series at the production level they require, which could be considerable in the case of “La Mesías.” Javier Calvo calls it “very complex and highly ambitious, and spanning many different epochs,” running from the ’80s to the present day.
“La Mesías,” as described by Calvo, is a “family thriller.”
Blending genres and eras, it turns on Enric, who is heavily impacted watching a viral video of a five-sister Christian pop band. Enric himself is still traumatised by a childhood marked by the religious fanaticism of a mother with delirious messianic ambitions.
“‘La Mesías’ talks about overcoming trauma, faith as a tool to fill an emptiness and art as the only escape from horror,” Calvo said at “La Mesías” presentation.
All three of these themes are universal, Corral added.
In “The Left-Handed Son,” Lola, a well-heeled divorced mother of two, sees her teen son embroiled ever more in a local neo-Nazi gang. A mother at an early age, in an attempt to understand and recuperate her son, she strikes up a friendship with Maru, from Seville’s humble outer suburbs, who faces a similar situation.
“A mother’s love or a son’s growth which overwhelms us, obliging us to revise our identity: This is global, ancient, recognizable and marvelous material to work with,” says Cobos.