El Continental

El Continental (The Continental) was a Spanish period drama created by Frank Ariza and produced by Gossip Events in association with TVE. It ran for ten episodes in the fall of 2018 and is regarded as one of the most embarrassing flops in Spanish television history.

Premise
Set in 1920s Madrid, the show is named after a fictional club that becomes a hub for illegal business, alcohol trafficking in particular. The series focuses on the venue and the clandestine business that takes place there, and the love relationship between Andrea Abascal and Ricardo León.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) Appalling lack of historical accuracy. Specific examples include:
 * 2) * Spain continued to be a primarily agricultural nation until well into the 20th century, which means that the workers' barracks seen on the show, while typical of the industrial revolution elsewhere in Europe, didn't get much traction in Spain, since pretty much anyone who wasn't rich enough to buy a house in the city would stay in the rural areas.
 * 3) * Ricardo's gang seemingly produces distilled beer. There was hardly any market for distilled liquor in the 1920s in Spain, mainly for two reasons: there never was such a thing as Prohibition in the country, and because wine (not yet a luxury product at the time, and with lower quality standards than present-day wine, to be fair) was far easier to produce and much cheaper. As for beer, in particular, the cereals needed to produce it were mostly destined for baking bread.
 * 4) * Similarly, the spike in morphine addiction after World War I happened in countries that had taken part in the war, primarily among the ailing combatants who returned home. Having stayed out of the war, Spain had far fewer addicts than, say, Germany or France. As such, the country's legal network of pharmacies could easily cover the local morphine demand, rendering a morphine black market, which Ricardo's gang is also implied to indulge in, utterly pointless.
 * 5) * Jazz music was pretty much unknown in Spain until much, much later than the 1920s, which makes the jazz performances in El Continental anachronical.
 * 6) * For part of the decade, the country was under a military dictatorship, with a permanently-declared state of war during it, and a getaway law that allowed the police to kill on sight anyone considered an escaped suspect, which led to major loophole abuse (officers were allowed to kill anyone who ignored a 'halt!' and would often fake the circumstances of execution to make it look like a thwarted getaway) that went largely unpunished. Therefore, even if robberies and violence in the streets were very much a thing in 1920s Spain, organized crime, let alone full-on gang warfare like the one depicted on the show, was not.
 * 7) The show fails to properly present Ricardo as an interesting antihero, instead making him look like a cocky jerk most of the time and a creep when he stays too long watching Andrea from outside her bedroom door the first time he sees her.
 * 8) The acting is not good despite the (mostly) stellar cast. Alleged bitter enemies Ricardo and Baena speak of each other with voice and emotion suggesting they each find the other a minor annoyance rather than a hated rival.
 * 9) Mishmash of aesthetic references, ranging from Peaky Blinders to Western movies, that don't mesh well with one another.
 * 10) * This also results in a shifting, incoherent tone for the show. It tries to be at once a Western, a Spanish Peaky Blinders, a romance drama, the story of an empowered woman... and ends up failing at being any of them.
 * 11) Perico is constantly abused through the whole first episode, being bullied by Ricardo's gang and then non-fatally shot by Ricardo himself just to put pressure on Alfonso.

The Only Redeeming Quality

 * 1) The theme song is moderately catchy.

Reception
El Continental was panned by the media for its poor writing, unfocused plot, amateurish camera work, and apparent lack of character direction and historical accuracy. Fotogramas described it as a "bottom-of-the-barrel" Peaky Blinders knockoff: "It's hard to believe that the public network would put its money - and seeing the cast and sets, it doesn't look like little money - into a project built on such a weak script. If there is a script at all, because seeing the first episode, one comes to wonder whether anyone thought of proper running order, plot map, and character introduction. El Continental lacks structure: it's a succession of scenes poorly strung together without any mid- or short-term goal."

The series premiered with just over 1.5 million viewers tuning in to its first episode, but after losing half of its audience within the next three weeks, TVE moved the remaining six episodes to a late-night timeslot. The show's lowest viewership was recorded on the seventh episode, with only 153,000 viewers tuning in.

El Continental holds a 5.2/10 average rating on IMDb.

Videos
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