series

This week, the new ‘Stranger Things’, a rare British series and the return of Charlize Theron

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The week of April 20 to 26 comes full of news to Netflix. The most media premiere and expected by long-time fans of the platform is the first spin-off of ‘Stranger Things‘, an animated series subtitled ‘Stories of 85’ and which takes place between seasons 2 and 3 of the original series. But it’s not the only thing we have this week: there is the British thriller ‘The Not Chosen’ and a fast-paced thriller starring the platform’s very regular Charlize Theron, who will put her most extreme survival skills into play. Series Stranger Things: Stories from ’85 First animated spin-off of ‘Stranger Things’, which allows us to recover the characters loved by fans with the ages of the first seasons (specifically, between the second and third), avoiding that annoying mania of the actors to grow and mature. Winter 1985 in Hawkins: The tranquility after the explosive end of the second year is shattered when a new threat emerges from The Other Side. The Duffer brothers serve as executive producers of this proposal seeking to recreate the aesthetics of Saturday morning cartoons from the eighties. The animation by the Australian studio Flying Bark Productions mixes modern techniques with retro sensibility but, yes, the original actors of the series do not participate in the dubbing. The unelected British psychological thriller that at some point is reminiscent of the memorable ‘The Leftovers’ and follows a young mother who lives with her husband and daughter within a hermetic Christian community. The appearance of an escaped prisoner reveals the reality and restrictions of that closed world, raising doubts about whether the community really looks out for Rosie’s best interests. Asa Butterfield, who plays the husband, was the protagonist of ‘Sex Education’ and among the supporting cast we have none other than the former Doctor Who Christopher Eccleston. Other series Funny AF with Kevin Hart – April 20 Here we talk about orchards – April 22 Santita – April 22 Hulk Hogan: Real American – April 22 A love that never ends – April 22 He teacher – April 23 ORna new move (T2) – April 23 The Trials of Winnie Mandela – April 23 If the wishes they will kill – April 24 Movies Dominant predator Poxo sexy (although literal) Spanish translation of the much more suggestive original ‘Apex’, a survival thriller with which Charlize Theron returns to Netflix after the sequel to ‘The Old Guard’, which went somewhat unnoticed. Here she plays a grieving woman who ventures alone into the outback Australian and ends up trapped in a deadly game of cat and mouse with a psychopath played by Taron Egerton. Directed by Icelandic Baltasar Kormákur, accustomed to dangerous environments like those of ‘Everest’ or ‘Drifting’. The best: Theron performed much of her own action scenes, as usual, and trained with professional climber Beth Rodden, so we will have a good physical display of the actress, who usually gives herself to the maximum in the genre. Usual Suspects One of the undisputed classics of the wave of thrillers that devastated the screens in the nineties with a cast that still impresses today: Kevin Spacey, Chazz Palminteri, Gabriel Byrne and Benicio del Toro. A customs agent investigates a fire with 27 victims on a ship in the port of Los Angeles. Through the story of a conman who survived the massacre, the film reconstructs how five criminals met in a police lineup and ended up entangled in an operation orchestrated by Keyser Söze, a legendary and feared crime lord. Director Bryan Singer and Kevin Spacey gained international recognition with this film written by Christopher McQuarrie, who would later direct the most spectacular installments of ‘Mission Impossible’, here in an early work for which he conceived one of the most memorable and influential final twists in history. Other movies Lainey Wilson: Country is still playing – April 22 Yiya Murano: Death at tea time – April 23 All sides of the bed – April 24 In Xataka | Netflix is ​​desperate to find the next franchise that will make it gold. The problem is that he can’t find it.

In China, 470 series made with AI are produced per day. 99.9% of them do not reach anyone

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In January 2026, the platforms streaming Chinese companies recorded the launch of more than 14,600 short series generated with artificial intelligence. There are 470 new titles a day, all ready to be distributed through applications like Douyin or Hongguo. The fact that is not widely disseminated is where almost all of that content went. Long live the microdramatic. The microdramas (either duanju) They are mobile series with episodes of between two and five minutes, usually adaptations of novels previously published in web format, and which are disseminated on pages financed not with subscriptions, but through micropayments and algorithmic advertising. The narrative of these series is extremely formulaic, despite the fact that on paper it seems very varied: the rich also cry, time travel, sentimental revenge, melodramas concentrated in a few minutes, all designed (circular and repetitive plots, characters that enunciate what is happening) to consume between subway stops. The irresistible growth of duanju. The format had been flourishing for years before AI will arrive. The Chinese microdrama market lost revenue from 500 million dollars in 2021 to 7,000 million in 2024surpassing the national film box office that year for the first time. In 2025, the sector was already close to 9.4 billion. It is estimated that more than 830 million users consumed the format, and about 60% of them pay or make transactions on platforms that offer a few free episodes to hook viewers. As in so many other industrial aspects, China has built, without attracting the attention of the rest of the world, the largest serialized entertainment market in terms of volume on the planet. AI Invasion. A live-action microdrama cost more than one million yuan to produce in 2024. With AI tools like Kling or Seedancethe same project It costs between 50,000 and 100,000 yuan (between 6,000 and 12,000 euros). In the cheapest production studios, the figure drops to 30,000 or 40,000 yuan per complete series. The cost per minute of content fell from between 3,000 and 5,000 yuan at the beginning of 2024 to between 200 and 1,000 today. Everything changes. This fall has transformed the structure of the microdrama industry, and has boosted companies specialized in the AI ​​variant of the genre such as Jiangyou Culture, which with the support of China Literature (the publishing group affiliated with Tencent), grew to a thousand employees and has a turnover of around 1 billion yuan annually with net margins of between 20% and 30%. Judian, another production company, generates around a hundred microdramas photorealistic films per month and between one thousand and two thousand audiodramas with synthesized voice. 99.88%. Of the 127,800 AI series in circulation in February 2026, the proportion that crossed the 100 million views threshold was 0.117%. In 2025, the specialized app Douyin launched 60,000 series generated with AI, and only ninety-six reached that same number. That 0.16% success rate has been dropping as production volume has risen. But there are also differences with live-action microdramas: the most watched AI series accumulated about one billion views, and the most successful live-action series, 4.4 billion. Viewers detect the synthetic quality and the uncanny valley the emotional commitment is burdened, which leads, according to experts, to a significant abyss: the viewer does not want to pay for it. Advertising spending. The dominant business model in this million-dollar sector is known as “traffic arbitrage”: produce cheaply with AI, invest aggressively in advertising within the platforms to generate visits and pray to survive on the margin. In March 2026, daily advertising spending on AI microdramas on Douyin exceeded 70 million yuan, surpassing that of live-action productions for the first time. That is to say: the loop can be financially sustained even if the audiences do not attend. The actors suffer. Actor Li Wenhao entered the microdrama industry in 2023 and worked 50 consecutive days. In March 2026, only six worked, according to Hello China Tech. Castings are increasingly rare, microdrama production companies they hire fewer and fewer humans: For example, Chengdu Zhongdu, a medium-sized studio, announced in March that it was abandoning production live-actionconverting its entire workforce to AI. Actress Hao Lei, one of the most respected figures in Chinese dramatic cinema, has said that AI will replace 90% of actors, adding that in certain records it already surpasses the human equivalent. Stolen faces. The displacement of professional actors was foreseeable, but the massive and unauthorized appropriation of real faces was not so predictable. In early 2026, a 72-episode AI-generated historical drama appeared in Hongguo and gained widespread popularity before a blogger specialized in traditional Chinese clothing discovered that one of the characters had her face. The same thing was detected by another content creator, and neither of them was compensated or informed, Hello China Tech also says. And of course, professional actors have also been victims of this type of practice: Yi Yangqianxi (Jackson Yee), Xiao Zhan and Dilraba Dilmurat are some of them. But the cases of semi-anonymous people, like these content creators, are much more bloody: they discovered the theft of their face almost by chance, so anyone who has uploaded enough content to the internet to train an AI may find themselves in a similar situation. Header | pandaily

The trailer for the ‘Harry Potter’ series innovates zero things with respect to the film. Just what millennials want

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HBO has just released the first trailer for its television adaptation of ‘harry potter‘, and the most widespread reaction is neither enthusiasm nor rejection: it is that of a certain déjà vu uncomfortable. The series premieres on Christmas 2026 and already raises the question that has been floating for two years without an answer: what does this contribute that the film saga that started in 2001 and that marked the generation does not have? millennial? The trailer. The first season of this series based on the saga of children’s wizards by JK Rowling, titled ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ (that is, everything indicates that it will focus on the first volume), will premiere on Christmas 2026 with eight episodes. Earlier than expected, since the calendar pointed to early 2027. The trailer presents the new leading trio: Dominic McLaughlin as Harry, Arabella Stanton as Hermione and Alastair Stout as Ron, along with a gallery of strong secondary actors: John Lithgow as Dumbledore, Paapa Essiedu as Snape, Janet McTeer as McGonagall and Nick Frost as Hagrid. Everything the same. “I don’t know how to explain it, but this looks like the live-action version of a live-action movie,” he wrote. a Reddit user a few hours after the trailer was published, and there are those who consider that phrase a perfect summary of the most widespread reaction. Another noted: “I feel like I woke up in an alternate reality where the series looks and sounds the same, but the characters have other faces.” The same suits, the same reference planes, the same spaces, but different faces. They had already warned. It can’t be said that we didn’t know. In August, Chris Columbus (director of the first two films and largely responsible for the aesthetic representation of the books on screen) declared that, upon seeing photos from Hagrid’s filming, the character was wearing “the exact same costume we designed. Part of me thought, what’s the point of this? I thought everything was going to be different, but it’s more of the same.” The trailer gave shape to their fears with absolute precision. The amusement park variable. There is an economic variable that is rarely mentioned, but that is decisive. Since Universal opened the first Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando in 2010, the parks’ annual attendance has doubled and revenue grew by 109% between 2010 and 2015until reaching 3,340 million dollars. Today the ecosystem extends to Japan, Hollywood, Beijing and, in the coming years, an ambitious resort in Bedford, United Kingdom. All that framework (castles, costumes, interactive elements, stores) visually replicate the movies, not the books. TO JK Rowling It is also good for you to maintain that consistency. The second largest source of income for the author It is her participation in the profits of the theme parks, which makes her an interested party in ensuring that the aesthetics of the franchise remain stable. Rowling, who is also listed as an executive producer on the series, stated that worked closely with the scriptwriters in adaptation. Everything under control. Not all bad. There have also been positive reactions: some fans they perceive details of the books that the movies left out: these encyclopedic fans have been waiting for decades for a version that does literal justice to Rowling’s original, and as Columbus recognizedbeing able to adapt each book in ten hours allows us to include many aspects that were left out in the movies. The trailer, of course, has to focus on what is recognizable, on what the millennials They expect to see, and hence the mirror effect has been sought. The series, when it premieres, will have to find the balance between surprise and predictability. In Xataka | A Harry Potter fan fiction was so successful that it changed the names of its protagonists. And thanks to this he earned 3 million dollars

Football, movies and series for 9.99 euros per month with Movistar Plus+. Without permanence and you can share it with a friend

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When a long-running series comes to an end, it’s a great time to start it or pick it up if you’ve ever fallen by the wayside. That’s what happens with ‘Outlander’, which recently premiered its final season. and that you can see, in full, on Movistar Plus+: it costs to subscribe 9.99 euros per month. And it has no permanence. Monthly subscription to Movistar Plus+ The price could vary. We earn commission from these links You can share Movistar Plus+ with a friend or family member There are several things to take into account about Movistar Plus+. The first is that we can subscribe even if we have Internet or mobile rate with another company. Also, since it has no permanence, we can try one or two months (or however long) and unsubscribe at any time. And be careful, because you can share your password with a friend and thus share expenses. Each one with its own profile, too, so you can continue your series where you left them. As we said above, now is a good time if you are interested ‘Outlander‘. With the arrival of the eighth and final season, we have the opportunity to see how this series ends, as well as to get hooked from its first season, since Movistar Plus+ has the entire series. And with Easter just around the corner, ideal for a marathon. Speaking of Easter, if you are one of those who plan to travel, Movistar Plus could be great for you. The platform allows you to download your movies and series to watch them offlinesomething that is perfect for those very long and boring flights or train journeys. There you can download, for example, Goya award-winning movies like ‘Sundays‘ either ‘Deaf‘. It doesn’t end there: Movistar Plus+ also has a lot of sports. With the subscription we will be able to watch great soccer games such as, without going any further, Real Madrid-Manchester City tomorrow. Also tennis, basketball and rugby, all live. And if, in addition, you have a cultural bonus, You can get a year of the platform for only 39 euros. Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Movistar Plus+ In Xataka | Mega-guide to set up a home theater: projector, screen, sound system and more In Xataka | Best televisions in quality price. Which one to buy and seven recommended 4K smart TVs

Years ago the series had more scenes. The platforms are cutting them without warning

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The seasons of the series streaming They are increasingly shorter, and not always by creative decision. Behind the cuts are skyrocketing production costs, subscriber retention strategies and, sometimes, decisions made from the accounting department and not from the writers’ table. The phenomenon is so broad that it also affects altered versions of classic series, eliminating scenes and changing soundtracks without warning. This episode is not how I remembered. You are reviewing a series that you already know and something goes wrong: a scene that you remembered clearly does not appear. Or the opening credits song sounds different. Or the final episode ends earlier than it should. It is not always a failure of your memory. Often, the version you see in front of you is not the same as the one you saw back in the day. This phenomenon has gained visibility in recent months thanks to users who document on social networks the differences between versions, and its scope is greater than it seems. The platforms of streaming They offer, in many cases and without realizing it, degraded or cut versions of series and movies. The reasons behind these decisions are multiple. Sustained contraction. Before entering into the phenomenon of cuts without notice, it is worth remembering some facts. According to the firm Parrot Analyticsthe average number of episodes per season on free-to-air television fell from 16.2 in 2018 to 11.8 in July 2024. On streaming platforms streamingwhich already started from shorter seasons, have also contracted: from 10.7 episodes on average in 2018 to 9.3 in the same period. Some studies talk that production companies and platforms are increasingly stingy when it comes to renewing or ordering series: they simply ask for fewer episodes. One last piece of information about this reduction: in 2025, the number of original series streaming fell by 11% year-on-year. Beyond those series that suffer, against the will of their creators, cuts in the number of their episodes (as it happened at the time with ‘The House of the Dragon’), there are cuts from series already broadcast. For example, the final episode of ‘Friday Night Lights’, which is now on Filmin (in its shortened version) had a duration of more than 60 minutes. When it moved to NBC for free-to-air broadcast, it was cut to less than 45 minutes to fit with advertising. Complete scenes are missing from this mutilated version. Here we can see a similar case with an episode of ‘The Bill Cosby Hour’ streaming. Music, another point of friction. The licensing rights for musical themes do not always extend to all platforms or expire after a period of time, which requires replacing original songs with others. When ‘The Wonder Years’ arrived on Netflix in 2011 after years of being blocked by rights issues, numerous songs had been replaced, including Joe Cocker’s iconic version of ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ that opened each episode. In ‘Dawson Grows’, Paula Cole’s original tune was replaced in streaming by a Jann Arden song; The fan outcry was so intense that Cole ended up re-recording his own song. It is a common problem, which has meant that legendary series like ‘Luz de Luna’ or ‘Búscate la vida’ have spent years without being able to be seen, not even in domestic formats (in the case of Chris Peterson’s legendary series, we are still waiting). The war of the formats. We’ve already talked about itbut it is not bad to remember that the image format has been manipulated on countless occasions to adapt it to widescreen televisions. The case of ‘The Simpsons’ is perhaps the most popularsince many jokes with the original square format of the first seasons were lost. Also The case of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ is popular‘, which in its panoramic format and retouched colors makes the illusion of night scenes from the original series disappear and allows the filming crew and sets to be seen. A disaster that can only be solved by going to the first editions on DVD before their “remastering”. What to do to solve it. One more time: do not completely rule out the physical format. Until now we were certain (video game fans have been suffering from this for years) that fluctuations in catalogs, even of material that you have purchased and that is theoretically yours, can play tricks on you. We are now convinced that the fact that a film is in a catalog today streaming It does not assure us that it will be within a year: reasons as spurious as saving fees or storage space for platform owners can lead to the elimination of thousands of movies and series. The only way to preserve a movie or series without anyone modifying it, to make sure that no one is going to cut it because they think you are not prepared to pay enough attention to it, is to have your own copy. In physical or digital form, but in a safe place. Until recently, keeping our DVDs, our CDs with games, our cartridges and our vinyl, our records with backup copies was something for nostalgic and paranoid people. Now it is a matter of preserving what the platforms continue to mutilate. In Xataka | Generation Z has found the remedy to streaming subscription fatigue: buying DVDs again

Employment among those over 65 triples and reaches the maximum in the historical series. There is a good reason: retirement

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The labor market in Spain has recorded several notable milestones in recent months: record contributions, lowest unemployment rate in decades and recovery of youth employment. However, the last annualized EPA data They hide a story that goes beyond global figures. According to Annual average data for 2025 published this week by the INE, the employment rate among those over 65 has reached its historical maximum, and the reason is not that older Spaniards have discovered a sudden love for work. There is something structural behind it that deserves a closer look. An aging workforce. The aging of the population in Spain, and the changes in the pension system that were approved in the 2011 reform, are quietly but very significantly redrawing the Spanish labor map. What a decade ago seemed like a statistical anomaly has today become a consolidated trend with direct consequences on the future and viability of public pensions. The EPA data of the fourth quarter of 2025 indicate that at the end of the year there were 4,926,300 employed people over 55 years of age in Spain. This represents a growth of 23.3% in this age range since the 2022 labor reform, compared to the 11.3% average increase recorded by the rest of the ages. But the most striking thing is that the employment rate among those over 65 years of age has tripled compared to the levels of a decade ago, with 14.25% for men between 65 and 69 years old and 12.29% for women in the same age group, compared to the 5% that was registered in 2015. The employment rate for men between 60 and 64 years old is around 58% in 2025. highest since the early 1980s. All this used to be retirement. What largely explains this rebound in employment among the population over 65 years of age is not a greater demand for experienced workers, but rather the progressive delay in the legal retirement age. In 2026, the legal age for access ordinary retirement For those who have less than 38 years and 3 months of contributions it is 66 years and 10 months. This displacement forces many people to remain active beyond the age of 65 at which they could previously retire. Howeverthe report ‘Quarterly Labor Market Observatory‘ prepared by Fedea and BBVA Research confirms that the increase in senior membership is mainly due to the aging of the population and the delay of retirement agewhich often responds to the need to continue working due to financial difficulties. Staying in the job market at that age is not easy. However, although the data points to record percentages compared to historical figures, the reality is that their employment situation is not a bed of roses. a study of the BBVA and Ivie Foundation has revealed that those over 55 years of age register for the first time an unemployment rate of 9.8%, exceeding the unemployment rate of the group of people between 25 and 54 years of age. Furthermore, six out of ten unemployed of that age group They are long-term unemployed, a percentage that triples that of young people between 16 and 24 years old. The data depict a labor market in which workers over 55 years of age they lose their jobs a decade before their retirement age, and must survive throughout that time either with temporary employment, or in a situation of chronic unemployment due to lack of opportunities. At the other extreme, the employment rate of 14.2% shows those who have managed to stay afloat or get out of that hole. The pension system, the backdrop. Behind all these figures there is a reality that economists have been pointing out for years: the pension system needs people to work longer. to be sustainable. The reforms have been moving incentives in that direction, tightening the requirements for early retirement with greater pension reduction coefficientsand with a progressive increase in the necessary years of contributions. The result is what the data is already showing: there are more and more people who cannot retire at age 65 and must extend their working life until age 67 (effective in 2027) to access their retirement pension. In Xataka | What is the regulatory base: how it is calculated in 2026 with examples Image | Unsplash (Matt Bennett)

The best TVs to play and get the most out of your PS5 or Xbox Series

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You buy a television thinking you’ve hit the nail on the head and suddenly your friend tells you that it’s not good for gaming. That if your screen offers 60 Hz, that if it does not have HDMI 2.1, that the future is in the cloud and the television does not support it… But what is all this? What TV should I buy to have a good experience with PlayStation and Xbox consoles? We’re going to get technical, but we’re going to explain in detail what each thing is so that now you can hit the nail on the head with your purchase. What is necessary to squeeze out the features of the consoles 4K, Full HD or HD resolution. The most important thing when choosing a TV, as long as we do so to take advantage of the features of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series Xis that its screen offers 4K resolution. This should not be a problem if we choose a television larger than 40 inches, since this is normally the resolution that has become the standard for a few years. Although they are gradually disappearing, there are televisions below that diagonal, especially less than 30 inches, that offer Full HD resolution or, where appropriate, HD. In this case, we recommend that beyond 40 inches it be 4K to have better visual quality, so as not to notice the pixels as much. To make everything clearer, both the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X offer: Resolution up to 4K. Support for a refresh rate of up to 120 Hz. HDMI 2.1 support. Hertz and the relationship with fps. The second most important thing is that the television is capable of offering a refresh rate of at least 120 Hz. But be careful, not all video games offer a 4K/120 Hz ratio, so you have to pay attention here. In many cases, games allow us to choose various quality/performance modes, which is usually 4K/30 fps or Full HD/120 Hz. But… am I confusing hertz (Hz) with Frames per Second (FPS, frames per second)? It is not the same, but it is closely related. Stay with this: if the console offers 120 fps, but the TV only has 60 Hz, we will only take advantage of the fluidity of 60 fps. On the other hand, if the television offers a rate greater than 120 Hz, we will take advantage of 120 fps. While fps is the amount of images that the console can generate, Hz is the frequency with which the TV updates the image. For this reason, they are different concepts, but they are closely related. HDMI 2.1 or HDMI 2.1b. When buying a television, we should pay attention to the version of its HDMI ports. The consoles are compatible with HDMI 2.1, so the ideal is that we choose this same version if we are looking for the best experience. Now, you may come across a similar version called HDMI 2.1b. It is more designed for very large televisions or screens, such as those in shopping centers, since they offer compatibility with a higher resolution. Keep these differences: HDMI 2.1: supports 8K at 60 Hz and 4K at 120 Hz. HDMI 2.1b: Supports 8K at 60 Hz, 4K at 120 Hz and 10K at 120 Hz. There are more differences, but in practice they are not usually taken advantage of, at least on consoles. Do not buy a television prioritizing this HDMI 2.1b standard, especially if it is more expensive. The important thing here is that it at least has HDMI 2.1 and not HDMI 2.0, which in the latter case offers a lower resolution/hertz ratio, so you would not take advantage of the features of the consoles. HDMI 2.1 at 60Hz. Although the ideal is that we opt for a television that offers 4K resolution and a refresh rate of 120 Hz and that has HDMI 2.1 ports, this is not always the case. My example: I have a TV with HDMI 2.1 and a 4K display, but its refresh rate is 60 Hz. I don’t get the most out of my PS5, so I wouldn’t recommend this TV for gaming. Depending on the prices we see on televisions, it is advisable to spend a little more to have a good resolution/hertz/HDMI 2.1 ratio. Latency or input lag. Although this is something that is usually looked at more closely with monitors, here it is advisable that we take a look at the specifications of the televisions to know what the response time is. In some cases, brands may not mention it, but if they do, at least this latency is less than 5 ms. In this way, when you press a button on the console controller, the video game character will move practically instantly. The higher the latency, the more we will notice the “delay” between pressing the button and the character moving. As a summary, in this table we leave the essentials with a brief explanation of what each thing is: The best option What is it for? Resolution 4K So that the images are of higher quality and the pixels are not noticeable. Hertz 120Hz So that the images look more fluid. HDMI HDMI 2.1 So that televisions can offer higher resolution at a high refresh rate. Latency Less than 5 ms So that there is not too much delay between pressing the button and the action being displayed on the screen. The functions and technologies that are a good addition We have already talked about the essentials, now we are going to give way to those functions or technologies that only add. Variable Refresh Rate. The VRR It is a technology that allows us to adapt the refresh rate of a television or monitor to the fps rate of the game we are running. This ensures a smoother experience. But it does not do it alone, but through two technologies: AMD FreeSync via software. Nvidia G-Sync via hardware or Nvidia G-Sync … Read more

13 premiere movies and series to watch in February 2026 on Netflix, Prime Video, HBO Max and streaming

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Christmas is definitely behind us and the platforms greet 2026 with a few powerful premieres, some expected returns and a resurgence of the platform fight. Choose your favorite, because we bring you the juiciest news of February in terms of streaming. The queen of chess If you think that ‘Queen’s Gambit‘ is among the best things Netflix has ever produced, check out this documentary that tells the true story of the legendary Hungarian chess player Judit Polgár. Overcoming the sexism of a space controlled by men, she challenged champions like Garry Kasparov to become a champion of the sport with a career that began when she was only 12 years old, as the result of her parents’ experiment to raise geniuses. On Netflix February 6 Samuel After a triumphant stint on RTVE, this acclaimed Franco-Spanish series comes to Netflix, consisting of a single season of 21 four-minute episodes. An endearing and sometimes somewhat crude vision of the transition from childhood to adolescence through Samuel’s personal diary, which narrates his concerns, fears, goals and feelings, including everything from unrequited love to experiences such as the death of a friend’s grandmother. The minimalist visual style has a spontaneous touch that tends towards graphic experimentation, and gives rise to a little gem that adds to the best of Netflix’s animation section. On Netflix February 5 Stargate SG1 By surprise and in anticipation of the new series that Prime Video will produce, this modern classic of television science fiction arrives on Netflix. Although the platform has not specified what we can expect from this recovery, we trust that we will have at our disposal the ten seasons of which it consisted, no less than 214 episodes in total. A year after Roland Emmerich’s 1994 film tells the story, it starts with the idea that Ra was not the only alien who used stargates to transport human slaves to multiple planets. Let’s hope things go well for Netflix and we can enjoy successive spin-offs like ‘Atlantis’, ‘Universe’ and even the two direct-to-DVD movies. On Netflix February 15 The deception The Russo brothers are behind the production of this film that recovers the trope of the expert assassin retired and far from the madding crowd, but in a pirate key: Ercell “Bloody Mary” Bodden thought she had escaped her violent past, finding peace in the Cayman Islands with her husband, her son and her sister-in-law. But when her infamous ex-captain arrives seeking revenge, her world falls apart and she is forced back into action. The cast is headed by Priyanka Chopra, whom the Russos already showed us in ‘Citadel‘ and the always reliable Karl Urban. On Prime Video on February 25 Ponies Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson star in this spy comedy that promises excitement and entanglement with airs vintage thanks to its setting in the late seventies. In Moscow, two ponies (“people of no interest”) work as secretaries at the United States embassy until their husbands are murdered under mysterious circumstances. That’s when they become CIA agents. One of them is the daughter of Soviet immigrants, speaks Russian and is overqualified. His companion, the complete opposite: a somewhat reckless village girl. Together, they try to uncover a great conspiracy in the middle of the Cold War. Now available on SkyShowtime Neighbors The trendy indie production company in Hollywood, A24, is behind this documentary series that sometimes seems like a sitcom and sometimes like a demented thriller: it examines stories of absurd, scandalous and dramatic residential conflicts, starring a fauna of extravagant characters spread across the United States. Each episode features a group of neighbors in conflict, with protests ranging from property lines to the use of pets or the appearance with which they go out on the street. Surviving Paradise: Beyond Jehovah’s Witnesses For a long time, Jehovah’s Witnesses have been part of the friendlier landscape of Spanish religion. But hidden behind absolute secrecy was what many former members of the organization describe as a much more disturbing reality. This documentary goes into the annulment methods typical of a sect that many former members claim are practiced in secret: three episodes that talk about the passage of these former Witnesses through the group, their abandonment of it and the subsequent organization until reaching the trials in 2022. Rafaela and her crazy world This new series from the Chanante universe, created by Aníbal Gómez and based on his own book ‘The amazing world of Rafaella Mozarella’, promises to be absolutely insane. It is directed by Ernesto Sevilla and on board are many of the usual suspects: Aníbal himself, Ingrid García-Jonsson, Carlos Areces, Joaquín Reyes and Arturo Valls. Surreal and hooligan, it will tell us the life of a teenager who lives immersed in a dysfunctional family accompanied by three friends and a poodle. At Atresplayer on February 15 The Muppet Show (2026) Let’s get rid of comebacks that don’t interest anyone. This is the most anticipated reboot in television history since ‘DuckTales’ returned: all the classic characters in a legendary program with, how could it be otherwise, a special guest. In this case, Sabrina Carpenter with the help of the great comedian Maya Rudolph. Produces a certified Muppet fan, Seth Rogen, on a roll since he made ‘The Studio’. If this turns out half as well, we have Muppets for a while. On Disney+ on February 4 In an instant (In the Blink of an Eye) He directed two of Pixar’s best films, ‘WALL-E’ and ‘Finding Nemo’, and the industry fell on him when he signed a box office disaster that almost took down Disney, the highly underrated ‘John Carter’. It seems that Hollywood has forgiven him, and Andrew Stanton returns with a film that exhibits declared influences from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, ‘Magnolia’ and ‘Interstellar’. The film features three interconnected stories spanning thousands of years exploring the entire history of the world, and was presented at Sundance, where it won the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Award (awarded for the best representation of science, … Read more

Netflix series are becoming more and more similar to each other and Matt Damon knows who is to blame: your cell phone

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Matt Damon has just confirmed one of the most widespread suspicions about Netflix. In one almost three hour conversation with Joe Roganwhere he appeared alongside Ben Affleck to promote ‘The Loot’, his new film, the actor revealed that the platform requires scriptwriters to constantly repeat the plot in the dialogues. The reason is that the platform assumes that the viewer is with their cell phone in hand while watching its content. Affleck went further and pointed out that streaming has built its entire business model on the assumption that no viewer pays full attention to the screen. Partial attention. Damon didn’t mince his words: if you write for Netflix, you assume from the beginning that your viewer has Instagram open in another tab or is answering WhatsApps. Affleck mentioned the concept of “partial attention,” a term that technology and behavioral studies have been dissecting for years and that now sets the rules for how to construct a dialogue. For the two actors, this has nothing to do with a conspiracy theory or union complaint: it is the real editorial policy of the platform. New era. The leap compared to traditional cinema is brutal. In a dark room there is no escape: the cell phone is silent (or it should be), the giant screen takes up the entire field of vision and the fact of being surrounded by people forces you not to get lost. Netflix plays in another league: it competes with notifications, with getting up to get something from the refrigerator, with someone commenting out loud about what just happened. And instead of standing up to this dispersion, it has chosen to adapt: ​​every five minutes someone recapitulates who is who and what the hell is going on. Netflix vs. Hollywood. This is not the first time that Hollywood has attacked streaming, although it is perhaps the most specific in technical terms. Spielberg already said in 2019 that Netflix movies should compete for Emmys instead of Oscars, and his argument was exactly this: that where you watch something determines what that something is. Scorsese went further that same yearjust as Netflix was paying him for ‘The Irishman’, and talked about the erosion of what he called the concept of “revelation”, those moments that only work if the viewer is completely immersed in the film. What Damon and Affleck bring to the table is the practical detail: we’re not talking about aesthetics or philosophy, but rather literal instructions that screenwriters receive in development meetings. In Rogan. Almost three hours of conversation where there is time for everything. Joe Rogan’s format (long conversations, no commercial breaks, no rush) allows two guys used to reciting friendly anecdotes on Jimmy Fallon’s shows to develop complex ideas. And therein lies the surprise: Affleck and Damon are not just familiar faces who sell movies, they have been inside the machinery for thirty years and know exactly how every gear works. The contrast with the usual promotional circuit is devastating: these two actors, whom many know mainly as movie stars, turn out to be sharp analysts of an industry in the midst of an existential crisis. A narrative change. What Damon and Affleck say is not an isolated case: it confirms a trend that the industry has been tracking for years. Deloitte documented in its annual report on digital trends Doing other things while watching a series is no longer the exception, it is the norm. The leap compared to the prestige television of two decades ago is evident: before the series constructed scenes without words, they left narrative gaps that the viewer had to fill in on their own, they introduced secondary characters whose importance was not clear until later seasons. David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, said who had designed the series like a visual novel: each episode required total concentration because crucial information could appear at any moment. The Netflix change. The platform works differently. Provides showrunners accurate data about the exact minute viewers leave a series or pause to do something else. Those metrics set the development notes: If the data shows that audiences lose interest in scenes without dialogue or complex subplots, subsequent seasons simplify the structure and multiply the verbal exposition. ‘Wednesday’ and the fifth season of ‘Stranger Things’ are recent examples of this process. Completion rate (how many users actually finish a series) has become the criterion that dictates creative decisions unthinkable a decade and a half ago. A paradox without a solution. What Damon says contains a contradiction: the technology that has allowed millions of people to access content previously reserved for movie theaters or physical distribution is changing what type of content is produced. Netflix reaches 260 million subscribers; HBO never went over 150 million in its best era. But this increase in audience comes at a cost: the narrative is simplified to accommodate viewers whose attention is divided. Can both models coexist? Recent series like ‘The Bear’ or ‘Succession’ have achieved million-dollar audiences without sacrificing ellipses, long silences or plots that demand attention. Damon’s comment perhaps functions more as a diagnosis than as a definitive sentence: it shows a tension that Hollywood has not resolved for years, the clash between the logic of streaming based on metrics and the persistence of narratives that demand concentration. If viewers look at their phones while watching series, Netflix simply recognizes that behavior and adjusts its production accordingly. But… do we want him to do it? In Xataka | lhe creative death of Marvel’s MCU left a huge hole. One that in my case is filling WWE on Netflix

The fifth season of ‘Stranger Things’ is the worst of the series by far. Netflix doesn’t care

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Few series better illustrate the dissociation between popularity and prestige than the fifth season of ‘Stranger Things’. The numbers are overwhelming: the closing of the saga accumulated 105.7 million views on Netflixconsolidating itself as the ninth most viewed English series in the entire history of the platform. However, the critical reception and even some increasingly disappointed fans With the conclusion they leave the franchise in an uncomfortable no man’s land that, for the moment, refuses (very much) to die. Audience bomb. The numbers are impressive: the conclusion of the last season propelled Netflix to its best viewership on a New Year’s Day. Furthermore, in an unprecedented experiment, the platform released the final two-hour episode in theaters and raised $25 million at the box office in just 48 hours. It was a very limited distribution of only 600 rooms, in a period of 36 hours and without traditional ticket sales (20 dollars in food and drink were purchased that gave the right to a seat), due to the actors’ royalty contracts: the collection was entirely for the theaters of the chain that had exclusive distribution, AMC. And critical disappointment. On Rotten TomatoesFor example, the audience score has suffered an unprecedented drop in the franchise: from 96% for the first season in 2016 to the current 54% for the fifth, after 90% for the second, 86% for the third and 89% for the fourth. It’s a forty-point drop that reflects more than just viewer fatigue. TIME He explained it in an article about the phenomenon: in 2016 the series was an irresistible nostalgic toy. Nine years later, it’s a content factory. Nine years ago it redefined streaming and entertainment; Now he is another victim of Hollywood franchise machinery. Why didn’t you like it? The criticism of the fifth season is not limited to the disappointment of the fans. It has been said that the series has failed to delve into its characters as they grew. In the technical sectionit has been commented that it is a sloppy production, in the worst Netflix style: excessive lighting, abuse of background blur, obvious color schemes… The aforementioned TIME article also alluded to its pace, with an excess of exposition and verbalization, since this season is the conclusion of a decadent trend for the series that started in season 4. Critical point. The episode in which all these tensions crystallized It was the penultimate of the series, whose IMDb score plummeted to 5.4 out of 10, becoming the lowest rated episode of the entire franchise, and the only one below 7.8, when most episodes range between 8.6 and 9.2. The episode accumulated more than 96,000 ratings, double that of the rest of the season’s episodes, which is why it is suspected of a campaign of review bombing due to its central scene; In any case, some of the criticism pointed to legitimate writing and pacing problems. The unstoppable franchise. If the quality has dropped, why does Netflix insist on milking the series? The answer lies in analysis as this parrot which speaks of more than a billion dollars in revenue since 2020, that is, not counting the first three seasons. To this we must add more than two million new subscribers directly attributable to the franchise. And above all, something intangible: the series consolidated the current model of streaming and gave Netflix executives confidence that they could launch franchises capable of competing with rivals like Marvel. What does it grow with? The company has designed an expansion plan that will keep the Hawkins universe alive for years. The first major spin-off was a play (‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’), which premiered in London’s West End in 2023 and jumped to Broadway in 2025, exploring the origins of Vecna ​​and the first experiments of Project Indigo. ‘Tales from ’85’, an animated series set in the winter between the second and third seasons, is planned for 2026. The main characters (Once, Hopper, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Will, Max) will return in an animated version, which will allow you to touch with your fingertips that impossible treasure that is that children never age. Beyond animation, Netflix is ​​developing an as yet untitled live-action spin-off that will rethink the series from scratch: new characters, probably another decade, and without directly entering the Upside Down. It will work more as an anthology connected to the mythology and tone of the original than as a typical sequel. To this we must add the comics, which Norma Editorial has published in Spain since 2018, immersive experiences in Abu Dhabi and Mexico City, collaborations with Fortnite and extensive merchandising. And although the Duffers have an exclusive contract with Paramount, they will maintain creative supervision of everything related to the series. The underlying problem. With the conclusion of ‘Stranger Things’, Netflix is at a strategic crossroads. There is currently no original production on the platform that is so attractive and, above all, so generationally transversal, something in which ‘The Squid Game’, ‘Wednesday’ or ‘The Bridgertons’ fail. As El País points out, one of the reasons why Netflix has shown interest in acquiring Warner It is precisely because of the need to access a catalog of expandable properties in the style of DC, Harry Potter or ‘Game of Thrones’. The machine does not stop or wait for anyone. In Xataka | The best Netflix series that you can currently watch on the platform

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