‘Celeste’ Creator Diego San José, Director Elena Trapé on Turning a Tax Inspector Into ‘Dirty Harry’ — SkimNews
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Movistar Plus will world-premiere 'Celeste' Season 2 on Oct. 26 at Barcelona's Serielizados Fest, with Imagina Sales (The Mediapro Studio Distribution) handling international sales and bringing the six-episode series to Mipcom.
- Diego San José confirmed the new season is a prequel returning to Argentine soccer star Figueroa — a case he calls 'a pretext' — chosen because Sara's husband is alive in this timeline, allowing the writers to explore 'the end of love' rather than the solitude that drove Season 1.
- Elena Trapé said the prequel structure was designed to work as a standalone story for viewers who never saw Season 1, while still threading in details that retroactively illuminate the first season, with San José and co-writers Oriol Puig and Fernando Delgado-Hierro penning the scripts.
- Carmen Machi reprises the lead role of tax inspector Sara Santano, whom San José described as 'as obsessive and methodical as an FBI agent looking for a serial killer in Manhattan,' framing the show as 'film noir codes' transplanted into a tax office — 'Dirty Harry' energy in a bureaucratic gray zone.
- Season 1 won Spain's Ondas and Feroz awards for best comedy, and Series Mania's International Panorama awarded it best series and best actress for Machi, with the show having launched on Arte in France and Flow in Argentina.
- San José and Trapé have now collaborated on 'Celeste' and 'Yakarta' (three seasons total), with Javier Cámara earning an International Emmy nomination last month for the latter; San José said he wants Trapé to direct something without him, joking that if Cámara wins, 'it's going to be difficult to sit down to dinner without somebody saying, "Why don't you make a 'Yakarta 2'?'"
Why it matters: The Mediapro Studio is using Mipcom — the global TV-sales marketplace — to test international appetite for a Spanish-language noir-comedy that pivots from chasing a music star to a soccer idol, a subject the creators frame as culturally combustible in Spain. Built as a prequel that works for first-time viewers, Season 2 lowers the barrier to international buyers who never picked up the Ondas- and Feroz-winning first season.
Ask SkimNews
