EXCLUSIVE: Disney+ has placed a big bet on daily drama with the launch of Return to Las Sabinas.
The first five instalments dropped today in Spain, as well as on Disney+ around the world and Hulu in the U.S. The remaining 65 parts will be stripped throughout the week with new eps released weekday mornings. Soapy daily dramas and telenovelas move the dial across swathes of the TV world, but Return to Las Sabinas, from Diagonal and commissioned by Disney+ in Spain, is the first original series of its kind in the daily drama space for a major streamer.
Yesterday, on the eve of the launch, Disney+ programming boss Sofía Fábregas, creator and showrunner Eulàlia Carillo, and director Jordi Frades, clued Deadline in on the buzzy project.
“We said: ‘Nobody is streaming a daily show,’” says Fábregas, VP, Original Production for Disney+ in Spain when asked about the inception of the Return to Las Sabinas. “The [daily drama] model itself is not new. We are not inventing it, but we are doing something that nobody thought could be done on a streaming platform.”
Having launched after its SVOD peers in Spain, Disney+ needed content that would set it apart. The strategy has been two-fold: to work with established directors and filmmakers who have not made TV before, such as Clara Roquet (Libertad) and Javier Fesser (Camino); and to make a move into the daily melodrama space, hitherto the preserve of the free TV players.
“It’s yet to be confirmed if it’s going to be a success or not, but Disney was willing to take the risk to be the first with something that was both established, but because nobody had tried it [in streaming], also very new,” Fábregas says. “We wanted to take something that the audience was accustomed to and put it in an unexpected place.”
A Diagonal lens
Banijay’s Diagonal has made numerous daily dramas in Spain including Amar en Tiempos Revueltos (Love in Troubled Times). The challenge for the prodco this time was making something that felt premium but that stretched across 70 episodes. Out went the sets usually seen in such shows, as on location filming took place in and around Barcelona. The usual one-episode-per-day shooting schedule of a daily drama was also extended to give the team two-and-a-half per installment — still a punishing 22-pages of script each day. The show also had twice as long in post as a regular daily drama.
A seasoned team was assembled. Director Frades worked on Poblenou, one of the first ever daily dramas on Spanish TV some 30 years ago. Creator and showrunner Carillo is similarly experienced, with writing credits on Dreams of Liberty and many other series.
The location shoots and elongated schedule give Return to Las Sabinas a different flavor to other daily dramas, Carillo says. “The story required all this landscape and these locations. It’s not what we are used to with daily shows in Spain. We had more time — we spent almost two years writing.”
Disney+
Return to Las Sabinas has themes beloved of daily drama fans as the synopsis reveals: After many years apart, the Molina sisters receive a call that makes them return to their hometown, Manterana, to attend to their father’s health problems. This unexpected return means a reunion with the life and loves that they had tried to forget. Settled in their family estate Las Sabinas, they have to face secrets from the past that will change their lives.
The trick was keeping the elements the audience love but applying a premium finish, Frades says: “We didn’t want a very, very different plot. We want the people to find love, passion, drama, comedy and everything they like in a daily show, but maybe with a little upgrade.”
The thriller elements have been dialed up in keeping with the more premium feel, but at heart it’s about life, love and families. “It starts, as any other fiction does, with a question: What would you be willing to forgive?” Carillo says. “The series is about forgiveness and second chances. It’s also about first love and how it impacts on our lives, and also new loves and how we find love even when we don’t expect it.”
Frades wanted to conjure a sense of memories past for parts of the story. “I had a feeling of nostalgia, something like when you travel back to those years when you play in the in the woods, the smell of the grass, and you find your first love. Everything is so pure, but something happens that changes everything [in the series]. That’s the tragedy in our story. There’s a very beautiful first love, but we have a tragedy that make this break apart.”
The team promises that viewers investing time into 70 episodes will be rewarded with a satisfying conclusion, there’s no clunky attempt to leave doors open for a second season. Fábregas, meanwhile, says that, yes, there are other ideas for daily dramas on her desk should this one fly.
Betting on Daily Drama
Return to Las Sabinas was first announced at a Deadline-moderated session at Series Mania. It continued creating industry buzz at Iberseries & Industria Platina in Madrid last week. At that event there was much talk of Spain as a hub for global content and how to reach international markets with Spanish-language fare.
The new Disney+ new show will drop around the world. Obviously, Fábregas is angling for a local success that goes global. Within that there is a specific ambition to forge a meaningful Spain-Latin America connection. “We share the same language, but still there is not a show that really works in both markets. I would love to have one that speaks to all the Latin audiences,” she says.
The Disney+ Spain programming boss says the show is not an experiment. “I would say it’s a bet, and let’s see if we win,” she notes. “It is a bet because we haven’t done it yet, not us or not the other streamers. We’re programming against other streamers.”
If that bet pays off, this show could pave the way for a new type of original on SVOD. “Could it change the rules? Potentially, yes. Maybe in five years all the streamers will have programming like this,” says Fábregas.
