Is it compatible to be a mother with a wild life?

The emergence of an entire generation of female television fiction creators has spawned a subgenre until recently (almost) unheard of: the parenting comedy. Titles like Better things, Catastrophe, Working Moms, and The Letdown tackle motherhood from a desacralized perspective that turns humor into the best weapon to face the reality of parenting, without Instagram filters. In our country, we can place Mira lo que has hecho, with Berto Romero, and Això no és Suècia, by Aina Clotet and Mar Coll. In some episodes, this latter series brought together a group of real-life mothers in the fiction who shared their experiences as such in mutual support meetings. One of these mothers was Marta Bassols, a well-known (and beloved) writer, actress, and cultural agitator on the Barcelona scene. Now she is the one promoting another series about the tribulations of motherhood, Yo siempre a veces, co-written with Marta Loza, sponsored by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, and starring Ana Boga.

Bassols and Loza draw inspiration from their own experiences, as mothers and as daughters, to develop a dramatic comedy about a young woman from Barcelona, Laura, in her early thirties, who becomes pregnant unexpectedly and has to assume motherhood in a context of labor, emotional, and domestic instability. The father is present but not fully involved. Without abandoning humor, Yo siempre a veces is not so much in the comic register as in a tradition of indie cinema and series focused on capturing the emotional process of its protagonist as a sounding board, also, for a whole generational sentiment.

The series places Laura in a key dilemma: it raises whether it is possible to exercise the most loving and responsible motherhood without giving in to the traditional model of a nuclear family and stable civil servant job, nor renouncing a very free conception of understanding life. The series introduces the class dimension to highlight how professional merits that secure you a job in Berlin do not guarantee you stability to move forward with a child in Barcelona, especially if you don't have a family financial cushion.

Because right from the first episode, which depicts a night out in the city, Yo también a veces speaks about the love-hate bond with Barcelona that most of its inhabitants feel. The city is present in the series in many of its nuances, from the working-class neighborhoods of Santa Coloma de Gramenet to the well-to-do houses perched on Collserola, passing through the entire alternative scene where the protagonist moves. But also as a hostile territory surrendered to tourism. The creators also critique some discourses from the most transgressive environment and question to what extent real support networks are generated for alternative forms of motherhood.

Very well-tuned on an emotional level, at times you miss the series exploring more of the character's punk side, which shines through especially in the first and third episodes, with scenes like the one with milk (which the most cinephiles will connect with a similar situation in El futuro by Luis López Carrasco). The rather impeccable, very professional finish of Yo siempre a veces, subtracts a bit of the primitive and raw strength that you sense buried. But, as Marta Bassols says, it does point to defending an "erotics of care".