'Alpha Males', the keys to the best kept secret of the creators of 'La que se avecina'

Last Monday, the shooting of

, the new series from the creators of

, began in the afternoon and ended later still, around five in the morning on Tuesday.

One of the mansions in the luxurious Las Lomas urbanization, in Boadilla del Monte (Madrid), is hosting one of the last days of filming (the recording ended this Friday) of the 10 half-hour episodes that will make up the comedy with which the brothers Alberto and Laura Caballero debut on Netflix with an original fiction —

, another of his creations, has been in the platform's catalog for almost a year with a very good reception from the public—.

While a very pregnant Laura Caballero directs Fernando Gil and María Hervás inside, the rest of the main cast meets in the garden, next to the pool and the trampoline, to chat about a series that they had not been able to talk about until now .

Most haven't even been able to tell anyone what series they were working on.

They are also not very clear about what they can count (very little) and what not (almost everything).

The cast of

is made up of Fele Martínez, Fernando Gil, María Hervás, Raúl Tejón, Kira Miró, Gorka Otxoa, Paula Gallego, Virginia Rodríguez and Raquel Guerrero.

The four men play four friends who see their comfortable lives turned upside down as they lose the privileges that being men used to bring them.

Women will be the ones who promote these changes and force them to face their new reality.

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The creators of 'La que se avecina' go over to Netflix with 'Alpha Males', a series about the new masculinities

Since you can hardly talk about the argument, the conversation takes other courses.

They all claim to have experienced situations and have had debates such as those raised by the series, for whose premiere there is still no scheduled date.

“We are in a time when the feminist revolution, because the revolution will be feminist or it will not be, is here to stay.

As my grandmother would say, either you acclimatize or you get

.

There's a lot of people getting

because they don't want to acclimatize”, says Raúl Tejón, whose character is one of those who shows the most opposition to these role changes.

“It seems that when doing comedy you are not telling deep things, but in reality the series talks about important things, with humor, but it will be a mirror in which to see oneself reflected”, adds Raquel Guerrero.

“Obviously, there are some twists to it, because it's a comedy and some situations are exaggerated.

But it has a tone that is not at all eccentric.

It has very funny peaks and some of the relationships are tense, but it is a fairly faithful portrait of this moment of

that is lived before finishing taking the step, ”completes Fele Martínez.

Fernando Gil and María Hervás, at a time during the exterior shooting of the second episode of 'Alpha Males'. MANUEL FIESTAS/NETFLIX

Faced with the wild humor, bordering on the astracanada, of

and the whiter tone of

(both Telecinco series)

Gorka Otxoa describes

as “a naturalistic comedy, with a camera on the shoulder, in natural locations, very realistic, very close”.

"There is no grotesque, but there is no mercy with any of the characters," adds Raúl Tejón.

Fernando Gil, already incorporated into the conversation, takes the floor: “I think the difference with other productions by Contubernio [the production company of Alberto and Laura Caballero] is that it is more of a sitcom than a character comedy.

The characters are not so extreme, playing the sainete.

Here they are more everyday.

And the filming in real locations gives it a more cinematographic point.

It could be a version of Woody Allen that has Madrid as background instead of Manhattan”.

From Manhattan to Madrid

Alberto Caballero also mentions the New York director when explaining why they wanted Madrid to be the backdrop.

“We saw that it was a clearly urban series, and we came up and said 'if Woody Allen loves New York and is the protagonist of his things, our city is Madrid'.

We thought it would be nice to shoot in places that had some meaning to us.

We shot, for example, in Las Vistillas, a park where our grandparents used to take us when we were little.

We wanted specific places and locations that had charm”, says the writer and producer.

In addition to Madrid, the team shot some plots in Ibiza.

Laura Caballero directs the actor Raúl Tejón in a sequence of 'Alpha Males'. MANUEL FIESTAS/NETFLIX

For the two brothers, shooting in Madrid without setting foot on a set, in natural locations, has been a new and complex experience.

“We wanted to show how beautiful Madrid is, it is a very cool city, and Barcelona has always been given more prominence.

But searching for locations has been very hard, getting the permits, fitting everything together…”, says Laura Caballero.

Added to this are the night shoots, the unexpected demonstrations, the actors who tested positive for covid… “As they say in

, everything works out in the end, but how it is achieved is a mystery,” Alberto jokes.

Now that he has been able to see finished episodes, Alberto Caballero is finally totally calm about the series.

“When you do a new thing, you imagine it and look for actors that fit… but no one has a clue how it's going to turn out until you start seeing things.

I have been very calm all the time, but there is always some uncertainty because you have to get it right.

This is a very important moment for us because we jumped from conventional television, with all its good and bad, to platforms.

And we didn't want to screw it up at the worst time."

Gorka Otxoa plays Santi in 'Machos Alfa'. MANUEL FIESTAS/NETFLIX (MANUEL FIESTAS/NETFLIX)

Both highlight the leap in aesthetic quality that this production entails.

“In comedy, it seems that the aesthetic part could look cheap and nothing happened.

Making a comedy that is beautiful, that is cared for, with locations, is wonderful.

Comedy had always been the little sister”, says Laura Caballero.

“This also has a part to dignify comedy.

The platforms have made it possible to homogenize the historically most ambitious productions and comedies, raising everything to a higher level in the aesthetic part, ”adds her brother.

With

the Caballero brothers wanted to do something very different from their previous creations.

Are you afraid of the reaction of the public that can expect something similar to what has already been seen?

“In reality, it scares us more that it looks alike and that we realize that we only know how to do one thing,” says Alberto.

The actors clear doubts on this matter.

"They control the comedy that you don't see, they are in their element," says Fele Martínez.

“They have a very measured time, when the breaks have to go, when to give it more speed, when you have to prepare the gag…”, adds Raúl Tejón.

“It is the key to comedy and what differentiates it from drama, doing it for real but with the exact rhythm so that it fits and makes people laugh”, completes Kira Miró.

“Time is a tyrant in comedy.

If you go too far, the gag collapses, and if you fall short, it doesn't come”, concludes Fernando Gil.

"It scares me more that people see the chapters very quickly," reflects Alberto Caballero.

“That gives me tremendous anguish”, agrees his sister, “with what it costs to make a series!”.

Three shoots in parallel

Alberto and Laura Caballero have three series running at the moment:

and

.

And during the last two months, the filming of the three have coincided in time.

“We are at a point where things have gotten out of hand.

On the new sets of

I run into people I don't know”, says Alberto Caballero.

“We hurried with

to have all the scripts before we started shooting and getting it up to cruising speed.

At the same time, we started the new season of

which seems more like a

than a continuation of the series.

And then

which has the advantage that it goes very well on its own because we have Roberto Monge who is a director who has been with us from the beginning, the writers are quite seasoned... it is the most continuous series of the three”, reviews the producer.

While

has finished filming this week,

will do so in September and

in October.

"I don't know how many production companies there are in Spain with three series at the same time, I don't think many, and none as small as us," laughs Caballero. 

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