Coronado, a talisman for Netflix

Coronado has always been good at series. Precisely one of his first relevant roles was in ‘Brigada Central’, the famous police fiction on TVE in which he played a policeman secretly in love with Imanol Arias. He was also in ‘Composed and without a boyfriend’, as Lina Morgan’s partner, which became an event in Spain. And in ‘Hermanos de leche’, sharing blood with Juan Echanove. One of his most remembered jobs was in ‘Periodistas’, embodying the head of the local ‘Crónica’.

But it was his participation in ‘El Príncipe’ in 2014 that caused a differential event in his television career, which has marked him ever since. He gave life to a policeman who used unorthodox methods to impose order in a Ceuta neighborhood. In reality, he transferred to television a version of the role that Enrique Urbizu had given him in ‘There will be no peace for the wicked’ and that he has repeated since then with different variations: a tough, conflictive, unscrupulous guy, with an impossible to ignore charisma . His two seasons achieved success that Telecinco has not wanted to give up afterwards.

Since that series could not be extended any longer, what the Mediaset chain did was recruit the actor to play characters cut by the same pattern in different titles. Thus arose ‘Vivir sin permiso’ (from Plano to Plano, the same production company as the previous one) about a wealthy Galician businessman, involved in shady affairs, who is diagnosed with cancer and has to look for a successor. The fiction, with two seasons, was successful both in its time on Telecinco and on Netflix. Now the same thing is happening with ‘Entrevías’, about an ex-soldier who runs a neighborhood hardware store. Spectators responded to the open broadcast and joined the viewing on the streaming channel.

Since it was added to the catalog a few days ago, the second season of ‘Entrevías’ has been crowned as the most watched in Spain, followed closely by ‘El Príncipe’, which also sneaks into the ranking now that it is fully available on Netflix. Both share the podium with ‘La chica de nieve’, based on the novel by Javier Castillo, in which Coronado plays a journalist. The latter has not only been successful in Spain, the company itself has released data that makes it one of its most viewed productions worldwide.

Possibly the good result of this has prompted the revival of the previous ones, but Coronado’s effectiveness is indisputable and had already been evident on Netflix in other past works such as ‘The innocent’. In addition, something curious happens to the platform: Spanish series exported from other channels work better for it than its own. In fact these days ‘Drought’ has also been uploaded, with Rodolfo Sancho and Elena Rivera, which on Spanish Television had a poor performance but which on this channel has risen to second place among the most consumed. It is a paradox that the platform has a better eye for buying than for producing.

The moment of the open series

‘Entrevías’ is already preparing two new installments for Telecinco, in which, in addition to Coronado, Nona Sobo and Luis Zahera will continue to participate. In a weakened grid like that of this channel, the broadcast of unpublished episodes of this series can become a lifeline for audiences. There is no release date, it has not even been clarified if it can be seen before by the chain that promotes it or on the red platform. Other Telecinco titles have been released first on Prime Video and given the interest generated by everything Coronado does, it would not be unreasonable for Netflix to try to make the most of it.

Open series have found new lives thanks to the platforms. Atresmedia has been the one that has made it clearer that there was space for different windows, as shown by its own series that first worked well on Atresplayer, the media group’s platform, then they turned to linear TV to end up having an impact all over the world, as it happened with ‘Alba’. Its competitors have later been encouraged to use similar strategies.