I say “phenomenal” too many times. I already knew it, but seeing My Christmas On Disney+ I have been more aware of this and I plan to change it. “Phenomenal” is a very Madrid expression (I am) and very posh (I wish I were). In My Christmas, Isabel Preysler also says it a lot. Everything phenomenal. Except the series. My Christmas It’s awful and boring. Its two episodes are short, but watching them takes forever. Next to Isabel Preysler, the series about the family (of María) Pombo is The Sweetest Thing, The First Wives Club y out of touch together. At what point do we confuse elegance with insubstantiality?
Isabel Preysler is a very interesting character. She is many things at the same time and, if we trust her My Christmas, It really is none. Submissive geisha, ruthless businesswoman, mantis, sphinx, shadow power, mummy and collective projection. If we ask her (as does a obsequious voice-over in My Christmas), She will tell us that above all she is a mother, grandmother, friend of her friends and all the commonplaces that she can think of. Isabel Preysler is what you want her to be. Maybe that’s why My Christmas It seems like such empty content to me: my favorite Preysler is the one who says “no”, the one who controls the times, the one who hides what she knows, the one who intrigues and the one who, without really doing anything, gets rich. That Isabel is not in My Christmasjust in my head.
Our The Crown It should not be about the Bourbons but about the Preyslers. Her matriarch is perfect for filling her with interesting things. The same thing that Peter Morgan does with Queen Isabel or Lady Di could be done here by Javier Olivares, Isa Peña, Cristóbal Garrido or Anna R. Costa with Isabel Preysler. Although we all know that this type of fiction in Spain ends up mired in trials and lawsuits.
My Christmas premieres the same week in which the poster for the second season of Feud. After recounting the enmity between Bette Davis y Joan Crawford, Ryan Murphy will dedicate his series to Capote and his swans. Those women who had the writer as a pet friend without suspecting that he could be using them as material for his caustic writings. To no one’s surprise, Capote let them sell, exposing his petty sins and dismantling the high society paripe, whatever that means.
Like a huge paripé that he is, My Christmas It cries out to be dismantled. I would settle for a making of of its two episodes in which we can see Isabel saying “no.” When she says that she doesn’t like to be disturbed while she is having breakfast, the pantomime is hilarious: we see her eating her kiwi and grapefruit alone but we know that, in addition to the interlocutor who asks her stupid questions, there is a complete film crew there. It all makes for a lot of laughter and, above all, a lot of sleep. And a lot of laziness. The quintessential Spanish swan is stuffed.My Christmas It smells like talcum powder, tranquilizers and mothballs. Everything is phenomenal, everything is ideal, everything is gorgeous. It’s like looking at a wall beige throughout the afternoon.