The audience knew exactly what he craved Christophoros Papakaliatis I gave it to him to order, albeit a little late: live every “papacalist” trademark on the small screen, 11 years since the last time (which, as it turned out, was a lot).

So a young girl who at one moment radiates teenage innocence and the next yearns to discover every aspect of her femininity, with a Vespa that brings something from “Amelie” and a voice-over that tries to slightly adopt something then from “Fleabag”. meets on the newly arrived island, charming with a touch of arrogance, a 45-year-old man looking for a way in blue overalls, the eponymous maestro who was there to host a music festival.

paxos, so they become the setting for an ongoing romance between Clelia (Clelia Andriolatu) and Orestes (from the author of the project) which portends tense, stormy, dramatic and somewhat taboo (we’ll get to that). And together the Ionian island is a small community that we watch from the keyhole and contains things that go beyond the folklore of the case: an abusive and drunken husband (Janis Zortekis) hidden suspicion between two friends (Georgos Benos and Orestis Halkias) and hence the parent who has fleas in his ears (Fanis Muratidis).

Papakaliatis knows that Greek province this is a tried and tested recipe on TV. Thus, this trend of the last few years has been towards moving to the island and is therefore more suitable for film – which is really far from everything that “plays” on home TV – Paxos (guess which island will be invaded next summer). Good lighting, shots are not as #accidentalWesAnderson, production read.

He also knows that the pandemic “wrote” us, and he puts his story right after the “opening” – this is a good storytelling trick. mask to reveal faces, as happens every time Orestes and Clelia meet for the first time, perhaps a little unnecessary, of course, to flaunt masks on the screen so often.

“Maestro” and symbolically the one who comes to officially bring music (and therefore rhythm and life) to the island. It’s also a theme that seems to permeate the entire series: “Claire de Lune” (according to Debussy) the alter ego of the protagonist, who dubbed the first episode, the piano, on the keys of which Orestes and Clelia meet and recognize each other again. At the same time we hear another soundtrack with which many people remember the time when they were looking for which piece played here and there in the Panos Kokkinopoulos series.

The cast manages to be tight overall (don’t expect Christoforos Papakaliatis to play anything other than the typical Papakaliatis hero, whatever that entails), comic veins inspired by roles like hers Maria Cavoianni which makes Callas-Paola an expensive cigarette, but the real target comes from the locker room. OUR Haris Alexiou, in her first television role as Granny Clelia, she has nerves, sass, comedy, “squeezing” anyone around her while she’s in front of the camera, which ultimately made her by far the most magnetic of them all. in the first episode.

That’s all well and good, but it’s impossible not to mention the inevitable: how awkward the first series becomes at a key moment (and, secondly, how unfortunately the time coincided with current affairs). Yes, it is a pleasant moment that in the end the first acquaintance of the main characters took place in Corfu, and not in Paxos. Acquaintance through an application for dating a 47-year-old with an 18-year-old, although formally everything is fine, and if it didn’t take place, then it “kicks”. Especially when we see in him a girl who wants to lose her virginity at all costs in a strange house, and a middle-aged man who sits on a dating application and has an email. [email protected] (he miscalculated something) and blurts out with a lustful look: “Do they know where your parents are?”. it’s just her the meaning of “marginally legal” tightrope walker, not at all wanting to engage in feminist philosophy, but rather capturing my inner reaction as a woman.

What is certain is that in the season when we are talking and talking again, how much the domestic TV production has turned on the transmissions and suddenly tunes the receivers of people who are allergic to any channel that is not watched for a fee on “free” channels, Christoforos Papakaliatis managed to become the only one who turned television into an “event” on such a large scale. (and in fact, fully aware of this, each episode will also be accompanied by an official podcast).

And those who say that they saw the premiere “out of curiosity”, for the “trolls”, because somehow they still belong to the generation that the Papakaliatis brand was registered in their cultural unconscious in the good, bad, ugly, which it has meaning, by the way, I bet that there are already plans for next Thursday – especially after the cliffhanger at the end of the episode (even if all of the above apply).