Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat have a very recognizable style. One that, for various reasons, was not in prime time but yes in all his other jobs. We enjoyed it again in The one in charge and now, on the same platform (Disney+) on Anything. That Cohn and Duprat’s new series has the title it has indicates to what extent it maintains the authorship and personality of its creators. I can imagine the vinegar faces of the marketing and communication teams of the Mickey Mouse multinational when they were told that they had to sell a series titled Anything, Nothing, Nothing, Res.
But is that Anything sold alone. To begin with, because it is very short. Its five chapters are less than two and a half hours long. That Robert de Niro appears does not bother either, although from the beginning it is clear that his character is not the protagonist. Anything is Manuel Tamayo Prats and Manuel Tamayo Prats is Luis Brandonia very veteran Argentine actor perfect to play one of those unbearable (and yet endearing) gentlemen that Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat like so much.
Manuel is a food critic from Buenos Aires who loses his footing in life when his employee and caregiver, Celsa (María Rosa Fugazot) disappears from his life. Plagued by manias and unable to satisfy them, the burdensome grandfather will have to, in his own way, start from scratch. Or negative, since his economic situation is not exactly buoyant. Then Antonia (Majo Cabrera) arrives, a young woman who inherits Celsa’s job.
It’s easy to know where the plot will go. Anything. But throughout their careers, Cohn and Duprat have demonstrated their ability to find small cracks in the stories that we have been telling all our lives. What his latest series tells is one of those cautionary tales: the older bourgeois man who rediscovers the meaning of life through someone younger and poorer, but also purer. He is not spoiler to say that Anything fits that mold. Yes, it would be bursting the series to explain why it overflowswhere are those edges that its scriptwriters find in a story seen a thousand times.
Like in The one in charge o official competitionin Anything spaces are important. Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat believe in powerful images and want to create them. They know the power of places and they know how to make themwhen they have to adjust to productions that are not too splendid, look special. There are few more interesting spaces on recent television than the house of Manuel Tamayo Prats, a home halfway between an episode of Strays (“today in Straysold men with scary houses”) and the cover of an exquisite decoration supplement. Marcelo Pont Vergés, production director of Nada, also held that position in The one in charge. At this step it will reconfigure our audiovisual imaginary of Buenos Aires. His collaboration with Cohn and Gastón Duprat is comparable to that of Antxón Gómez with Almodóvar. In Anything every last cushion contributes because in Anything everything works.