USA TODAY International Edition
Three Latino-led shows add sizzle to summer TV
“Alternatino With Arturo Castro,” “Grand Hotel” and “Los Espookys” are triumphs of inclusion.
“Los Espookys” is what might happen if the Scooby-Doo gang walked into a John Waters movie. HBO’s creepy, kooky new comedy – the cable network’s first primarily Spanish-language original series – follows an oddball bunch of gore enthusiasts in an unnamed Latin American country who start a horror-for-hire business, staging fake exorcisms, haunted houses and alien abductions for a wealthy clientele. It’s the first of three new series premiering within the next week that center on Latinx stories and characters. ABC’s “Grand Hotel,” airing Monday (10 EDT/PDT), is a soapy family drama executiveproduced by Eva Longoria, set at a Hispanic-run luxury hotel in Miami Beach. And Comedy Central’s “Alternatino with Arturo Castro,” bowing Tuesday (10:30 EDT/PDT), is a sketch show from “Broad City” breakout Arturo Castro, spoofing pop culture, politics and life as a modern Latino man.
“All these shows are completely different, but they’re all Latino,” Castro says. “It just goes to show that we’re such a varied community, and it’s heartening because it starts to reflect the actual composition of what American society is. We buy 24% of the movie tickets, we’re (18%) of the population – we hold some power.”
“Los Espookys,” premiering Friday (11 EDT/PDT), was conceived by “Saturday Night Live” veteran Fred Armisen, who was inspired by everything from “The Addams Family” to “Twin Peaks” while writing the six-episode first season with co-creators and stars Julio Torres and Ana Fabrega.
“I like that it’s set in Latin America,” Armisen says of the show, which blends deadpan humor with mystery and supernatural elements. “There’s a different kind of spookiness to it than (horror stories set in) England or suburban America.”
Wanting to stay authentic to the story’s Latin American setting, the trio pitched it to HBO as a show with Spanish and English subtitles.
Making a foreign-language comedy “was never any concern,” Torres says. “If the whole world outside of the States can handle subtitles, then surely Americans can.”
Castro, who first pitched “Alternatino” to Spanish-language network Univision, instead saw his web series picked up by the more mainstream Comedy Central. A multipart sketch in the season premiere depicts him being fetishized by a white woman on their first date, as she makes stereotypical assumptions about his Guatemalan upbringing and insists they go out salsa dancing.
“There’s this connotation that Latinos have to love spicy food and salsa music, when really, I just love Mumford & Sons,” Castro says.
The show’s sketches also offer biting social commentary on recent news events, such as the family separation crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. Castro plays an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in a tongue-in-cheek PSA, touting that all children in their custody are “cage-free” and allowed to roam in fields.
“When I saw the images of kids in cages, I was like, ‘I need to address some of these issues through the platform I’ve been given,’ “Castro says. “There were days in the writers’ room where we’d be like, ‘What ticks us off? How do we digest it, and how do we make it funny?’ It’s tricky.”
“Grand Hotel,” in contrast, is intended solely as “an escape,” says writer/executive producer Brian Tanen. Adapted from a Spanish soap opera, the juicy, twisty drama follows debt-ridden patriarch Santiago Mendoza (Demián Bichir), who runs a sumptuous beachside hotel with his second wife (Roselyn Sanchez) and his adult children. But viewers quickly learn that it’s far from paradise, as infidelity, an unplanned pregnancy and possible murder rock already strained family relationships.
The show puts a modern twist on the usual “upstairs/downstairs” story by depicting the Hispanic characters as the rich proprietors of the hotel, rather than maids or waiters.
“The population of Miami is 70% Latino, so we felt it was authentic to make that family Latinx,” Tanen says. Additionally, nine of the show’s 11 series regulars are Latinx or African American, “so it was important to represent the world we know.”
Still, Latinos continue to struggle for representation on TV, making up just 6.2% of all roles on broadcast scripted shows, according to a diversity report published by UCLA in February. And with the majority of Latinxled shows existing only on cable and streaming – Starz’s “Vida,” USA’s “Queen of the South” and Netflix’s “On My Block,” among them – Tanen believes Hispanic audiences are ready for a network drama like “Grand Hotel.”
“TV is doing a better job as of late increasing racial inclusivity in their shows, but it’s still rare for the lead of a show to be a person of color,” Tanen says, citing “Ugly Betty” and “Jane the Virgin” as successful outliers.” So we’re following in that proud tradition of telling a very entertaining story with characters who happen to be Latinx, and representing underserved characters and underserved audiences.”