'Crackòvia', the return of a classic

BarcelonaAfter nine years off the air, Crackòvia will return to the screen with a new season that will combine the characters that turned the program into a benchmark for Catalan sports humor with new additions linked to current football events. 3Cat is bringing back the format with a new distribution strategy that places the digital platform at the center, but also maintains conventional broadcasting on TV3. The first episode will premiere on Monday, October 26th at 8:30 PM on the 3Cat platform and can be seen on Thursday on television, after Polònia.

The return was presented this Thursday at the Auditori 1899 of the Spotify Camp Nou, in an event that previewed some novelties of the new season. The program aims to update its universe of characters without renouncing the figures that are part of the viewers' memory. The production is once again in charge of Minoria Absoluta, responsible for the previous era, which could be seen between 2008 and 2017 and was removed from the programming following the cuts suffered by the public television.

Over the course of nearly a decade, Crackòvia turned current football events into material for parody, with imitations of players, coaches, and executives that often went beyond sports reporting. The program made the rivalry between Barça and Real Madrid one of its main humorous engines and popularized characters that caricatured both public statements and the quirks and controversies of football protagonists. The challenge of the return is to recover this satirical language in a sports and social landscape that has changed considerably since the end of the first era.

The director of TV3, Sigfrid Gras, has defended the recovery of the format as a way to combine the renewal of the offering with the continuity of the house's iconic products. During the presentation, he explained that the corporation wants to continue promoting new formats, but also give a new life to programs that have already demonstrated their ability to connect with the audience. In this sense, he highlighted that, almost a decade after ending its broadcasts, there are still viewers who recover the old episodes of Crackòvia through the available platforms. This continuity is one of the reasons why 3Cat wants to update the format and adapt it to the new ways of consuming audiovisual content, and thus continue with the strategy presented a few days ago by the Catalan corporation.

New characters and more prominence for women's football

The new stage will maintain Barça and Real Madrid as the central axes of the satire, but it will update the repertoire of characters to incorporate the current protagonists in the world of football. Among the new additions will be figures from the new generation of footballers, such as Lamine Yamal, Pau Cubarsí, Fermín López or the coach Hansi Flick, in the case of the blue and garnet team, and Vinícius Junior and Kylian Mbappé, in the Madrid side. The program will also recover historical figures such as Johan Cruyff and Josep Lluís Núñez, in addition to characters from sports journalism, such as Josep Pedrerol or Gerard Romero.

The presentation also served to showcase some of the new impersonations. The characters of Flick, played by Ivan Labanda, and José Mourinho, by Xavi Espinosa, starred in an appearance that reproduced the provocative tone of football press conferences. The intervention of Sergio Ramos and the appearance of Vinícius completed a scene that used the current events of the 'Clásico' between Barça and Madrid as a starting point to present the return of the program. The satire of public statements and rivalries between the protagonists thus continues to be one of the foundations of the format.

One of the changes will be the desire to give more space to women's football, which will have a prominent presence in this new season. Until now, the universe of Crackòviahad mainly revolved around the men's Barça and their rivalry with their eternal opponent. The return aims to broaden this focus to incorporate the azulgrana players, in a context in which this discipline has gained visibility within current sports events. The expansion of the perspective will include other Catalan clubs, such as Espanyol, Girona, and Sabadell. In this way, the program wants to widen the range of situations and characters susceptible to becoming humorous material, beyond the two great teams that have traditionally concentrated a good part of the media attention.

Language will be another of the important elements of the new stage. Catalan will continue to play a prominent role, especially in the characters linked to Barça, while the imitations will also take into account the public identity of each footballer. Gras has given as an example the contrast between Lamine Yamal, who will speak Catalan, and Vinícius, who will not adopt this language in the imitation. The proposal seeks to maintain the coherence of the caricatures and, at the same time, give continuity to the presence of Catalan in the corporation's contents.

The digital platform, first window

The program's distribution model changes compared to the previous era. Episodes will premiere on Mondays at 8:30 PM on the 3Cat platform, before moving to conventional television on Thursdays after Polònia, during the comedy nights planned by the channel. However, two days after the digital premiere, the episodes will also be published on the 3Cat Humor and 3Cat esports YouTube channels. Social media will have significant importance. Instagram and TikTok will complete the strategy with content designed to keep the program present throughout the week. The episodes will have an approximate duration of 20 minutes.

Gras explained that this distribution responds to the desire to reach different audiences, especially young viewers, who increasingly consume audiovisual content outside of traditional television. The presence on social media will not be limited to reproducing fragments of the episodes, but will allow for generating specific pieces and extending the life of the gags beyond the weekly broadcast. The goal is for the program not to be restricted to the moment of the premiere, but to continue circulating through the different digital channels.

The calendar is also designed to maintain a link with current sports news. The Monday premiere will allow for working with the weekend's events, including the classic match between Barça and Real Madrid this Sunday. The subsequent move to television poses the challenge of maintaining the relevance of the gags in weeks when there are European competitions. Gras has acknowledged that this is an issue they have considered and that, in some cases, the content may become outdated, although the intention is to adapt it as much as possible.

The cast will bring together actors and actresses from Polònia and from the previous stage of the program with emerging talents. Among the actors who had already been part of Crackòvia will be Ivan Labanda, Jordi Ríos, Carlos Latre, Pep Plaza, Alan Lillo, Cesc Casanovas, Carles Roig and Raúl Pérez. For this new stage, Alba Munuera, Ona Vinyamata, Xavi Espinosa, Moise Taxe, Soribah Ceesay, Laura Llobet, Magí Coma and Jaume Ibars are joining.