On Thursday night, La 1 premiered CrossobarA comedy program to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the public broadcaster. It is produced by El Terrat and is a sketch comedy format in the style of [unspecified]. Poland in which all the characters are part of the television and film universe, both past and present. Parodies are made ofThe Anthill, The Uprising and the Late Show by Marc Giró, from series like Wild Valley, The Bridgertons, The Ministry of Time, Sex and the City and The promiseand films like Pretty woman and Home AloneGiven that figures who have already passed away appear, such as Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente and Jesús Hermida, it must be deduced that there is a certain desire to connect with the sector boomer.
The direction, production, set design, and characterization of the performers are very good. It boasts a cast of actors and actresses especially gifted in comedy and impersonation. However, the fact that a significant portion of the performance repertoire of the Poland has landed in Crossobar It creates a strange feeling. This television overlap conveys a certain desire to appropriate the comedic capital of the TV3 program, to suck its soul dry.
The title of the program is dreadful. Crossobar It wants to be a very Ford-esque play on words based on the concept crossoverThe term "crossover" is an Anglicism that designates the crossing of characters from different series within the same narrative universe. Since some of the protagonists meet in a bar, which acts as an internal connecting thread, the title forces this terminological combination. But it results in a slow, jarring decoding, is disappointing, and doesn't quite work phonetically. This semantic failure is not anecdotal: it foreshadows the comedic failure of the entire program.
Television is extraordinarily receptive to parody. It has recognizable and popular codes, predictable rituals, and a repertoire of excesses that facilitate satire. Precisely for this reason, such weak and unsuccessful scripts for sketch comedy are disconcerting. Crossobar The parody remains superficial. The scripts focus on the television reference they're trying to caricature, but they don't know how to build the internal story. They confuse the sketch (which requires a narrative arc with setup, development, and resolution) with the gag, which should be the trigger for laughter. Without a story, the gag hangs in the balance; there's no tension or progression. It's as if nothing has actually happened. The canned laughter accentuates the failure because it underscores the emptiness. It's a shame, because Crossobar He has all the ingredients for a good show, but he doesn't know how to cook them up. He knows the language, but he lacks the technical skill to turn it into laughter.
