In the Press

Lucía González, a 31 year-old journalist, has an immediate objective in life: to find a normal boyfriend in 258 days so as to take him to her sister's wedding and defeat her mum who has bet –behind Lucía's back- that she will not make it. That is how Date Blind (Tuesday to Friday at 11 p.m.), the first fiction especially produced for Channel 7 in a long time, started. The series is a co-production between Rosstoc (Gastón Pauls' production company) and Dori Media. The protagonist is Muriel Santa Ana and the story consists of a mix of fiction and reality, and it was taken from Carolina Aguirre's blog, which later became a book.

Lucía is the anti-heroine: she is overweight, she cannot stop eating whenever she feels anguished, she lives alone and her job consists in writing the horoscope for a magazine (it is impossible not to compare her with Renée Zellweger's Bridget Jones, and there are several similarities between them; such similarities will be discovered as the story develops). Lucía's irritating mother (Georgina Barbarossa) does not stop pestering her and comparing her to her younger sister (María Abadi) who meets the requirements her mother thinks a girl should comply with: she is slim, she likes routine, she is cute and she has a boyfriend. That is the heavy load the protagonist has to put up with.

The series has two clearly different paths: the planning of the wedding and the everyday life in an editorial office (the journalistic setting appears again as in Lalola and Los exitosos Pells). The protagonist moves along both paths. The decision to choose Muriel Santa Ana –who seconded Carla Peterson in Lalola and who forms the musical-theatre experiment called "Ambulancia" together with Mike Amigorena– was a wise one and the main role is not too much for her. Her attitude, her way of speaking and walking and her constant expression of discouragement give Lucía everything she needs.

As of the first episode, we can see Silvia Montanari in one of the most attractive roles so far: a woman who loves cosmetic surgery, who utterly rejects marriage, and who will try to dissuade Abadi from marrying. Besides, the cast includes a bunch of great actors: Fabián Arenillas, Lidia Catalano, Boy Olmi, Osvaldo Santoro and Rafael Ferro, all of them experienced comedians who feel comfortable with the genre. Apart from them, Sebastián Wainraich, Silvina Luna and Brenda Gandini are also starring the series.

The aesthetics is similar to that of Lalola or Los exitosos Pells, a complete novelty for Televisión Pública's screen. The scripts are written by Marta Betoldi (Socias) and the direction is in the hands of Juan Taratuto (Un novio para mi mujer and ¿Quién dice que es fácil?), another of the weird specialists who is a pioneer in the genre.

After experiences like Los cuentos de Fontanarrosa, Variaciones or 200 años, channel 7 did not bet much on fiction. In fact, even the very much advertised actors' audition held last year came to nothing. Later on, they took a chance at excellent foreign productions (Ciudad de los hombres, Bruno Sierra and Carandirú). So, beyond the ratings (1,8 on Monday and 1,9 on Tuesday), Date Blind marks Televisión Pública's come-back to original fiction and that is great news.

Christian Sánchez
Translated from Spanish
© Crítica (Argentina) 2009