Preceded by considerable hype, Movistar+ has recently premiered the series ‘Celeste’, about a Latin singer investigated for tax fraud in Spain. It is not at all inspired by Shakira’s time in our country – you are going crazy – although it is true that the poster for the series already reveals that this is more about Carmen Machi, which no, it is not “Celeste”, the Latin singer, although sometimes she seems to want it.
The game of cat and mouse has inspired countless fictions, from ‘The Road Runner’ to ‘Killing Eve’. ‘Celeste’ follows that line, and Carmen Machi plays the “hunter”, a widowed tax inspector about to retire. This case that he ultimately accepts must be the icing on the cake of his entire career, after having lost a similar and mammoth case against a multimillionaire footballer. Machi’s character, Sara Santano, of course, could never get over that.
There are times when Diego San José’s series (8 Basque Surnames, Vota Juan…) tries too hard. Some of the songs that the actress who plays Celeste (Andrea Bayardo) sings in the series have been uploaded to YouTube. You won’t guess who it sounds like, for example, ‘Too much for you’. It is not a hit in the real world, nor is it the most dramatic facet of the series, something reminiscent of ‘The Woman Without a Piano’. In that sense, neither the plot of Machi’s deceased husband’s past, nor her dog, are essential.
If ‘Celeste’ is a small discovery, it is because of its mix between thriller and comedy. Celeste’s crime is not having killed anyone but, supposedly, having defrauded the public coffers. Carmen Machi tries to demonstrate that this singer has lived 184 days of a year in Spain and therefore had to pay her taxes in our country. The staging with that annual calendar full of post-its, which not even ‘True Crime’, the soundtrack and the structure of the series point to a “thriller”, which is quite comical.
Anyone who has had a problem with the treasury – a fine for not filling in a stupid box, the hundreds of times you had to pay taxes without having collected the relevant invoices – will find the routines of Carmen Machi’s character as familiar as they are intimidating. With just a glance at some paperwork, you know who, how and how much you are defrauding. “We can do this in two ways: the long way, or the short way” is his threat every time he visits a new business in search of evidence, while the manager’s legs tremble, and the viewer doesn’t know which one. of both sides to position themselves.
Because it is hateful to pay taxes when you barely have any benefits (which is not the case of Celeste), but in general in Spain we assume that the budget for health and education (or right now for those affected by dana) has to come from somewhere. On the other hand, this series is so strangely attractive. At least for self-employed people and entrepreneurs who have developed something similar to a Stockholm Syndrome with this ministry.
Due to some obvious things in the script, such as “We are all the Treasury,” and the anticlimactic nature of the meetings between the protagonists (no one wants to meet their Treasury inspector, it is better for everyone to go their own way), it is not that we are facing the best national series of the year, but before one of the most original.
