Superstar: The Insane Truth of 'Tamarism'

Superestar soon makes it clear that it's anything but normal. But what is normal, who is normal, who wants to be normal? And how to approach a phenomenon like tamarism from a perspective of realism, local customs, or, ahem, normality.

The fact is that Nacho Vigalondo, creator of Superestar , isn't particularly interested in Tamaraism . His series addresses the unlikely media phenomenon of Tamara Seisdedos and her peculiar satellites, but it does so almost as a formality so he can tell other stories. Superestar doesn't look at Tamara, Tony Genil, or Loly Álvarez from above, not even from the outside. Vigalondo wants to enter their inner worlds and, from there, tell their story. And understand that his not as the adventures they experienced, but as those they thought they were experiencing. It's a risky plan (even somewhat disrespectful, since in reality almost everyone experiences them), but also the only possible one. Or so it seems after watching the series. Superestar is the most outlandish fiction of the year. Also one of the very few that will make the viewer think: "I've never seen this before." They haven't seen it and didn't see it coming.

The strange gang that, at the turn of the century, took trash television to its zenith parades through Superestar with a certain order. Each episode focuses on one of its members, starting with the incomparable Margarita Seisdedos and ending with Tamara-Yurena, who will make sense (or not) of what until then seems like uncontrollable chaos. It seems so, and it is, because if Superestar is anything, it's contradictory. It's predictable to approach the first glimpse of Ingrid García-Jonsson as Tamara Seisdedos with distrust; it's impossible not to be mesmerized by her performance soon after, which embraces the character without reducing it to a collection of pouts. In Ingrid's Tamara, there is a real woman. There are also real men in Pepón Nieto's Tony Genil, Julián Villagrán's Arlekín, Secun de la Rosa's Leonardo Dantés, and Carlos Areces's Paco Porras. Not to mention Loly Álvarez, who, in the hands of Natalia de Molina, is demanding a standalone series. Everyone has their own space in Superstar. They are parallel and insane spaces. Superstar is a multiverse of perspectives, altered realities, and references that Nacho Vigalondo manages to make compatible: the series moves between David Lynch, John Waters, Eloy de la Iglesia, Chema García Ibarra, and Paolo Vasile.

Superstar begins by telling the story of Margarita Seisdedos. It does so with an exercise in narrative point of view as obvious as it is radical. At that moment, the series reveals its best trump card: everything you're about to see from now on happened, but that's not the point. Let's get inside the heads of its protagonists, let's pretend to see the world as Loly, Tony, or Leonardo do.

It'll be fun, but it'll also be terrifying. Superestar isn't a series about fame, but about loneliness and the need for validation. And about living (surviving) in your fantasy as a lifeline from a relentless and cruel reality. Stay tuned for the reimagining of The Martian Chronicles, with Nacho Vigalondo himself at the helm. And for the appearance of Albert Pla. An appearance almost in its conception of a vision of a supernatural and fantastic being.

Produced by the Javis family and recently released on Netflix, Superstar is also supernatural and fantastical. There's nothing normal about it. But who wants more normal series? And yet, that's what Tamara Seisdedos most wanted: respect, validation, and, ultimately, normality.