(Photo by Jennifer Clasen/HBO)
Hispanic actors have been part of the TV ecosystem practically since the medium was born, but it took Lucy’s love of Ricky Ricardo in 1951’s I Love Lucy to highlight the intimate family life of a Latino character and help set aside a strict vaqueros-and-villains tradition of Latino characters on TV. Stereotypes still appear — these days more often as drug dealers and human traffickers — but TV has evolved so that representation is no longer simply superficial or disparaging.
Take HBO’s refreshingly surreal Los Espookys. Fred Armisen wanted to create a show “that isn’t an explanation of Latino culture, that’s moving past the foreignness of it,” the former Saturday Night Live talent told The New York Times about the Spanish-language series he co-created with Julio Torres and Ana Fabrega for the U.S. television market.
Los Espookys follows a group of friends who fake horror events for a living in an unidentified Latin American country. The show stars Torres, Fabrega, Cassandra Ciangherotti, and Bernardo Velasco, with José Pablo Minor and Armisen as a recurring guest star. Season 1 is also Certified Fresh at 100% on the Tomatometer with 23 reviews.
As Hispanic Heritage Month comes to a close, we take a look at some American TV series that not only feature Latino (or “Latinx,” if you prefer) actors, but embrace Hispanic culture overall. Some will be familiar, like ABC’s Ugly Betty, The CW’s Jane the Virgin, and Netflix’s reboot of One Day at a Time (renewed for season 4 on Pop). Netflix has done a fantastic job of also introducing U.S. audiences to Spanish-language series that resonate broadly, like Elite (91% Tomatometer score) and Money Heist (100%), but those series weren’t necessarily made with American audiences in mind, and so we’ve left them off of this list.
Read on to see which U.S. television series have celebrated Hispanic culture. Don’t see your favorite on our list? Hit the comments section with the titles you love, and we’ll add your recommendations.
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