The United States commemorates the 250th anniversary of its independence while observing its democratic foundations in crisis. Platforms also celebrate this with some productions that revisit the nation's history with the subtle intention of reclaiming the values that are being undermined. On HBO Max, Barack and Michelle Obama have produced a series of comedic sketches together with Larry David. The actor, besides being the main protagonist, is also co-creator, co-writer, and producer alongside Jeff Schaffer, his collaborator on Curb your enthusiasm. The series Life, Larry and the pursuit of unhappiness: An almost history of America can be read allegorically. The title parodies the formula of the Declaration of Independence: “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.Larry David introduces his curmudgeonly and killjoy character into emblematic moments of United States history. The production is cinematic and features cameos from a large cast of celebrities such as Jimmy Kimmel, Kaley Cuoco, Jon Hamm, Sarah Silverman, or Rob Reiner, to whom a posthumous dedication is made. Life, Larry and the pursuit of unhappiness pays homage to history with a sense of humor while always seeking a biting contemporary reading. Not all sketches are successful, some are too long, but it has wit. Obama makes the initial presentation recalling the petty characters who have tried to prevent the progress of the United States, in an allusion to the protagonist, but it is inevitable to also think of Trump, who will become the absent and unmentionable protagonist. The past calls to him as a bad future that is inconceivable to exist. The sketch in which George Washington decides to set a limit of two terms for future presidents of the United States to guarantee the democratic health of the nation becomes visionary considering Trump's challenge this week in which he assures that he wants to run for a third term.One of the best sketches is the one that recreates the Rosa Parks episode on the bus. Traveling next to Larry David will blow up all the epicness of the woman who refused to give up her seat to a white man and became the symbol of the civil rights struggle. The whole series summarizes an alternative history of the United States where, for example, Bob Woodward will end up begging deep throat not to call him anymore to inform him about the Watergate case, we will discover the particular sense of decency of Senator McCarthy in his fall or the uncomfortable first airplane flight of the Wright brothers. Also the overwhelming pride of the mother of Jonas Salk, the discoverer of the polio vaccine. The television exercise is fun, and it turns out to be a bit paradoxical. While Donald Trump is destroying the values of the nation's founding spirit, the Obamas are rewriting its history with humor. Perhaps it's the saying that it's better to laugh than to cry.

If you fancy a documentary series of the kind that makes you look away from the screen to stop suffering, this is, without a shadow of a doubt, The dark wizard (The dark wizard), on the HBO Max platform. It is as distressing as it is addictive. You will very possibly devour the four episodes in one go. It is the story of the mountaineer Dean Potter, an expert in free climbing and wingsuit flying. He revolutionized highline –walking on a slackline suspended between cliffs– and was the main driving force behind free BASE –a discipline that combines climbing without any safety and BASE jumping–. Potter needed risk and adrenaline. His story, told by his close friends, constantly drifts between motivation and recklessness.The series is directed by two experts in mountaineering documentaries: Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen. Beyond their talent for telling stories that hang by a thread thousands of meters high, they have the ability to be very demanding of the quality and dramatic intensity of the stories. They dose the information and the emotional evolution of the protagonists very well.The dark magician also has the virtue of revealing an inner story linked to another very famous mountaineering documentary that won an Oscar in 2019. It is Free solo, the film that recounted Alex Honnold's ascent of El Capitán, a vertical wall in Yosemite National Park, without ropes or any safety system. That documentary showed above all the psychological dimension of a protagonist who, at any moment, could fall to his death in front of the cameras. What was not explained in that documentary now emerges in the HBO Max series. In fact, Honnold is one of the witnesses who reveal, with surprising coldness, his relationship with Dean Potter. In The dark magician the competition, not always honest, between both climbers is made clear, and how their rivalry influenced the risks that Potter was willing to take so as not to lose prominence.The documentary series explains the extreme personality of Dean Potter and leads the viewer to question the motivations of these climbers who constantly flirt with the possibility of falling into the void. Traumatic childhood experiences, lack of limits, mental health, and narcissism are aspects that run through the story and provoke contradictory emotions in the viewer. The compilation of archive images is magnificent, especially for reconstructing Potter's personality, and the metaphorical resources of birds give a more symbolic and mystical dimension to the story. From the beginning, there is a restlessness that seems to foreshadow the end. An adrenaline-fueled and dizzying documentary series that, when you finish it, reconciles you with daily routines and the peace of boredom.

The universe of Game of Thrones continues its expansion with a new season of the franchise's most successful spin-off, House of the Dragon. The wait between the first and second season was two years and the series team is repeating the strategy. Fans have had to test their patience for two more years. Finally, on June 22, HBO will release the first of eight new episodes, which will be an hour long. HBO maintains the broadcast plan and the number of episodes per season —the first had 10—, and will release them weekly, every Monday, to offer the season's final episode on August 10. The platform has also announced that it will conclude the series with a fourth season which, following the series' timeline, is expected to premiere around 2028, and will conclude the Targaryen era.

The heat has already arrived, but the platforms do not lose the illusion that we spend time on the sofa and in front of the screen. Among the attractions of the June series offer, we find Javier Bardem revisiting a classic film title, a new heroine emerging from the world of Jane Austen, and more dragons from George R.R. Martin.

The second season of The Pitt, the HBO Max series that has recaptured the spirit of great medical dramas, especially regarding its commitment to realism, has ended. Not a veracity as a mere production flourish, but for the dramatic demand to connect with social problems that engage the viewer beyond mere entertainment. In this new stage, the dramatic tone has been intensified and the psychological dimension of the characters has been increased.

A living legend of Italian cinema, Marco Bellocchio, at over eighty years old, is enjoying a new golden age in his career, which has recently expanded to include television fiction. Four years ago he premiered Exterior nit, a series revolving around a recurring theme in his work: the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro and the impact it had on the political map of his country. Now he premieres the equally splendid Portobellowhich shares several points of contact with the previous title. Once again, we have a miniseries focused on the real-life ordeal of an Italian politician, in this case Enzo Tortora (Fabrizio Gifuni, who also played Moro), a member of the Radical Party but much better known as the presenter of a hugely successful television magazine program in 1970s Italy, the Portobello From the title.

Streaming releases pick up momentum in February, which will be marked primarily by the long-awaited arrival of the major phenomenon of late 2025 in the United States, Canada, and social media. More than rivalsBeyond that, this February we'll also see a lot of Irish and English fiction and an attempt to revive the genre of thriller erotic.

Amazon paid the staggering sum of $250 million to acquire the rights toThe Lord of the Rings for making what was then the most ambitious series in terms of budget of this new era of audiovisual media. But, beyond the screen, in the real world of streaming wars, it will be Netflix that holds the coveted ring that allows them to rule them all.

Two fathers, both with obvious problems, on opposite sides of the law. This is, in essence, the scheme of Task, the new series from the creator of Madre of Easttown (2021), Brad Ingelsby, who hopes to repeat the success of that miniseries with another story about characters with a very heavy burden. This isn't the only element shared by both productions. Task, which arrives this Monday on HBO, is also set in suburban Pennsylvania, specifically the city of Philadelphia.

In the 1980s, his story filled pages and pages of newspapers and magazines. At 14 months old, Osel Hita Torres, a child born in the Alpujarra region of Granada, was declared the reincarnation of the Buddhist lama Yeshe, whose parents were admirers. Known as the lama child Osel, dressed in traditional red and yellow Buddhist garb, entered a monastery in India at the age of 18 months and did not leave it for good until he was 18, when he decided he wanted to experience the Western world with all its implications. The documentary 'Osel' tells the story of the child lama, now an adult, father of a seven-year-old son.