They are two of the most watched comedies in the history of Spanish television. There is no one living here It was originally broadcast between 2003 and 2006 on Antena 3, although thanks to reruns, platforms and networks it remains in the memory of viewers. Its 91 episodes were watched, on average, by more than six million viewers, a figure unattainable on today’s television. The one that is coming The show has been active since 2007 and will premiere its 15th season in the coming months (as new times dictate, it will do so first on Amazon Prime Video and then on Telecinco). With seasons with over four million viewers, it has an average of 2.7 million viewers in total, a great figure for these times. The confrontation between the two series led by siblings Alberto and Laura Caballero resurfaces every so often and is one of the recurring topics of conversation on the networks. Two journalists specialized in television argue in favor of both contenders in this fight between sisters.
There is no one living here
By Javier P. Martin (author of the book No one lives here: Behind the scenes: the delirious story of our communityPlaza & Janés)
There is no one living here It is a television miracle, not only because it was made under the worst possible conditions, but precisely because despite them, one of the most watched series on our television came out, and one that has aged the best. Or, actually, thanks to those conditions: the perfect symbiosis between cast and script was achieved, in part, thanks to the fact that they worked against the clock and very intensely.
It may be unfair of me to judge. The one that is coming, a series of which I don’t think I’ve seen a single full episode. But, after all, the Caballeros are masters of the vignette, albeit audiovisual, and it’s easy to extract the spirit of their comedies from loose scenes. And the spirits, whatever that is, of There is no one living here and her successor are, this is undeniable, very different from each other: both draw caricatures of the Spain of their respective times, but the one There is no one living here She is more benevolent, she feels compassion for those poor unfortunate people who live at 21 Desengaño Street; The one that is coming He dives headlong into the pool of histrionics, exaggerates the grotesque, turns his characters into deformed and excessive reflections with which I find it impossible to empathize.
Later, working under better conditions, The one that is coming lost much of that magic. Or maybe the problem is in me, and in my disconnection from the real Spain in which we live today. I often say that one of the most intelligent observations in my book was given to me by Ordaz, who, as we know, is fed up with us asking her about There is no one living herebut even more so for the other series. She told me that perhaps the portrait of The one that is coming was more reliable than we would like to think, a sitcom which has evolved over the years at the same pace as our country: increasingly angry, more polarized, more vocal and less empathetic and compassionate.
The one that is coming
By Natalia Marcos
It was not an easy task. The idea was to move to the competition, from Antena 3 to Telecinco, keeping the foundations but building a new building. That it would not be the same but it would seem that way. It is easy to imagine the panic of the series team when the change was undertaken. There were things that were lost in the move, but others were new and, contrary to what reason might indicate, it worked. If in 2007 they had been told that today, in the middle of 2024, we would still be seeing Antonio Recio, Amador and company on screen with new adventures, it would have been hard to believe. But here they are, alive and kicking, putting before Spanish society a distorted mirror that returns an image that sometimes we do not like to see and that makes us laugh with complicity and identification, even laugh out of fear of what we discover about ourselves in them. In the most extreme situations and characters, there is something that connects us with those people.
Television is made for people to watch. Prestige, awards, critical acclaim are all well and good… But if people don’t watch it, television has no meaning. Those who work in the medium know this well. They also know that there is no task more complicated than something as little valued as pure entertainment. The one that is coming, and the rest of the production of the Caballero brothers, from There is no one living here until The people, Alpha males and Dead SL., has that objective very clear. They make television for people to watch. They are lucky to have connected with the street and achieve that objective in each of their projects. The one that is coming They do it with histrionic, caricature-like characters that draw on the Spanish comic tradition. And they achieve it with scripts that make broad-brush humour an art. And a cast full of top-level actors who have made the characters their own without hesitation.
Thanks to this apparent insubstantiality, the series has been able to talk about any subject without a trace of self-censorship. The extreme profile of its characters allows them to verbalize things that no one would dare to say in a civilized society. The spirit of vaudeville lives on in The one that is coming. The series has survived everything, including the constant loss of viewers on traditional television and the rise of platforms (its most ardent fans can now watch each season twice, first on Prime Video and then on Telecinco). It has even had to move its set (and, in fiction, its building) to stay on its feet. Nothing has been able to stop it in 15 seasons. It is a miracle on today’s free-to-air television. Although perhaps the miracle has an explanation and it is that The one that is comingwhether we like it or not, it is us.
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