Señoras del (h)AMPA

I am really enjoying this show so far (almost done with season 1). Top notch acting from all lead actresses and support cast, excellent writing. It's full of humour but very dark, you have to be okay with a little blood here and there, some very twisted situations and characters. If you understand Spanish then bonus, I'm not sure the dubbed version can do it justice. All and all, a high quality show that's different and has its own voice. Spain produces a lot of great programs that sadly either get either butchered by the dubbing or ignored because of the subtitles and it's a shame. Give this one a chance if you come across it.

This series is part of a Spanish film and TV genre that that I am a sucker for: people of modest means doing ordinary things; ordering their kids around, losing their jobs, talking outside the school gates while they wait for their badly-behaved kids. There are lots of Spanish clichés that I love: people getting stressed and sweaty in small, dimly lit flats/apartments with 1970s kitchens in antique buildings; narrow streets, and even some dusty Castillian plains with rustic whitewashed buildings and green-painted doors.

When Pedro Almodovar does it it tends to involve very glamorous women protagonists, but part of the charm of Spanish TV is that it often uses ordinary-looking or funny looking people. Older women are much more visible than they are on a lot of English-language TV. This series has that. There are also at least three characters with disabilities, all of them complex characters and one of them awfully close to being a villain. Oh, and the five main characters are all women. However, it almost never seems earnest or PC.

The series gets dramatic to the point of farce and can be very amusing while doing it, but it is about people dealing with the psychological stress of ordinary life. It gets a bit gory and violent at times, and a bit sentimental in the multi-level-marketing sales conference episode, even as the episode sends up the rah-rah-rah ambience of the pyramid sales world.

But I thoroughly recommend it and I hope it gets seen outside Spain. PS: for anyone confused by some of the Spanglish in the synopsis, a "kitchen robot" is a food processor, and the Turbo Thunder is a fictionalised Thermomix

It's a pleasure watch a series with mainly women, some of them very good actresses.