“Nights now belong to everyone, but afternoons are still reserved for television.” The speaker is Josep Cister, the mastermind behind some of the biggest hit TV series. He is the creator of “La Promesa”, from Bambú productions, which is … has become one of the most watched daily afternoon fiction programs in recent times on La 1. Although, when he thought of this series, he had never imagined the journey it would have, from an Emmy Award to becoming an unmissable event for viewers. “When we start a series, obviously we do it with the hope that it will last as long as possible, but we know that that rarely happens, that it doesn’t always happen, that the series works.“. They started on Spanish television which is not today’s television and recognize having assumed this responsibility with “prudence and prudence”. “You can never imagine how many episodes you’re going to do, because you don’t really know how you’re going to handle the story or if television and viewers are going to continue to love you on the schedule,” he confesses.
This Wednesday, they broadcast a special episode to launch the fifth season, marked by the madness that Angela commits just before marrying Captain Lorenzo de la Mata. “This will trigger the start of the season, with Curro also very affected by everything that happened with Ángela and very willing to recover his place, which he believes has been taken away from him since the death of his sister Jana. With a Manuel who is also very willing to face Leocadia with the help of his father, because he does not understand the influence and power that Leocadia has acquired within the palace of “La Promesa”, and a María Fernández who will experience a somewhat dizzying pregnancy,” admits Cister.
Maintaining tension in each chapter without burning through too many plot cartridges at the same time is an art that Cister and his team seem to have mastered. “This is the most difficult question. This is done a bit between common sense and craftsmanship, but I will also tell you that when I write the plots, I often do it as a spectator, thinking if I were a spectator, what I would like to see and what I would not like to see. And it’s from there that I decide, because what the viewer would like to see is not always what should be done. I know what I say is super unpopular and people jump on me and everyone says horrible things to me, but that’s the reality, because that’s also life: what we want to happen to us doesn’t always happen to us,” says the designer.
For the team, the dissemination of information is the most important thing. “In life, not everything is perfect, life doses us with information and gives us things with effort, and yet, even if we make an effort and try, often it is not enough. So I think that’s where the balance lies,” he explains.
Family and quality
It is even difficult for Cister to identify the keys to the success of his series. If there was a specific formula, his function would end, but the truth is that his work is a mix between work, documentation and a little luck. “The main ingredient is family. We all have a family and here there is a play of two types of families, which we all also have in our lives: the blood family, the one that touches us, with which we do not always agree, and then the family that you choose, who are your friends, who in “The Promise” would be part of the service. We all have conflicts with our siblings, with our parents, with our partners at some point. “The Promise” still represents a little of what life is, the future of life itself,” he says.
If anything characterizes the daily afternoon series, it is that there has been a jump in quality. The difference between prime time and afternoon dramas was marked and, however, over time the afternoon slot began to grow in terms of viewers, partly due to this improvement, from scripts to settings and plots, sometimes even moving into prime time. “It was a clear intention from the start. We did not come across a better quality series by chance, but rather thanks to a determined will on the part of me, Ramón Campos and Televisión Española. I think daily series are now network prime time. Nights now belong to everyone, but afternoons are still reserved for television. Newspapers have become the star product, they build loyalty. We did that experience with “Two Lives” and in “The Promise” and “Valle Salvaje,” it’s the high point. In fact, in the United States, they think our product is on prime time and they don’t understand that it’s on in the afternoon five days a week,” he explains.
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