'Legacy': Imperial plagiarisms of provinces

Beyond the " boy meets girl " scenario, there are some very good movie ideas. For example: kidnappers take a rich man's son and demand a ransom. However, they've chosen the wrong child, and they've kidnapped the son of one of the millionaire's servants. What does the rich man do? He pays the ransom for a child that isn't his or lets them kill him? You can't make a bad movie out of that.

It is the plot of The hell of hate (1963), by Akira Kurosawa, which Spike Lee has now adapted in Highest 2 Lowest (the Japanese film is titled High and Low in English). The promos claim that Spike Lee is “revisiting” Kurosawa.

Another extraordinary idea: a woman enrolls her daughter in a new school , and when she goes to pick her up one day, she has disappeared. She reports the case to the police, and the officers find no evidence that the child exists. This plot is original to Bunny Lake is missing , a novel that Otto Preminger adapted into The Abduction from Bunny Lake (1965).

Interestingly, it has just been published in Spanish. Anyone can die in June , by Alan Parks. Plot? A child disappears and turns out not to exist; there are no records. Is Parks “revisiting” Merriam Modell , author of the original novel? No, he shamelessly plunders her, as there is no note in his novel acknowledging its source of inspiration. I highly doubt the same great idea could occur to two different people sixty years apart.

It's the story of a "media mogul" who battles his children "for control of his empire." Really?

Thus we come to Legacy , announced ten days ago as the story of " a media mogul " who battles his children "for control of his empire." Seriously? any decent person thinks. I've seen red cards for cracking an opponent's head open that now seem almost yellow compared to this rip-off.

To disguise such impudence, the series' advertising hinted at its connection to Succession, as if to imply that the idea of ​​upper-class families with media empires is in the air at the moment of their inheritance. A dignified way to bring Succession to Spanish society would have been to look to Inditex or Mercadona, which obviously have a great series in the works, and also one full of local material. Furthermore, what Legado calls a "media empire" isn't a Prisa Group , but rather a provincial newspaper, one of those that no one reads anymore unless their son has won a bicycle race. In Legado, this title is called Báltico , because El Faro de Vigo was already taken.

Still, who knows, maybe the series was passable .

No, it doesn't. It's all crazy.

First, we meet José Coronado, who has been resurrected in Houston because, as you know, if you're poor, all the rich people go to Houston to get their cancer treatment and come back alive. Coronado gives an interview on one of those programs that only airs when you die ( Epílogo , it was called in Spain; Legado , in the series; and the only interesting idea in the entire show) and claims to be "a bad father" because he treated his children atrociously . Later, we see that Chanquete would be a worse father than him.

There are four or five children, and it's hard to count them all, because they come and go with their respective partners, and it's hard to calculate the total number of offspring. They've simply decided to differentiate themselves from the Roys of Succession by adding extra children. The fact is that they've managed the newspaper and various charity funds with trickery unworthy of their father. This is quickly revealed because they're about to be subjected to "a tax audit ."

Imagine a series about a supposed media empire where everyone is shuddering over a ridiculous tax audit . Any self-employed person is subjected to a tax audit for claiming a cell phone tax deduction. But in Legacy, this audit is presented as if it were the Nuremberg trials.

To avoid inspection, they rely on connections . One of the sisters is a politician, and then there's a Secretary of State, and so they believe in the series that Treasury inspections are stopped, because sisters know Secretaries of State.

Little by little, Succession emerges in the narrative : we have a couple practicing polyamory (and a good line: "You've been doing well since you've been fucking other people") and a secret drama at the company. Where Succession hides sexual abuse, here "a journalist died on us." Then, for some reason, José Coronado speaks with a man who must be a mayor or worse in the middle of an empty, poorly lit soccer field.

What they haven't been able to plagiarize in Legacy is class . All these rich siblings dress across the entire sartorial spectrum, and the feeling you get from their clothes is that they bought them at H&M. (Later I saw in the credits that Adolfo Domínguez dressed them). There are shots with plants, dark settings, hipster-inspired scenes, offices (the newspaper's) like Telecinco on a day when they were broadcasting Sálvame ... Nothing clicks, as Succession did with its focus on very expensive clothing (Loro Piana), the omnipresent gray, straight lines, and sense of austere luxury. The family of the media empire in Legacy is no different from yours, so they can't be that imperial.

As if that weren't enough, the opening sequence is truly abominable.