Fictionalizing the story of real-life politicians is tricky, but it’s really tricky when the show is marketed to places outside its country of origin. Unless you’re really keen on the political history of that country, the show needs to hook you with a really good story. A new Argentinian dramedy about the unlikely presidency of Carlos Menem attempts to do just that.
Opening Shot: “ARGENTINA. 15 MARCH 1995.” We see real-life news footage of the aftermath of the bombing of Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina, still one of Argentina’s largest terror attacks.
The Gist: President Carlos Menem (Leonardo Sbaraglia) drapes himself over the coffin of someone lying in state at the presidential residence. Outside, Olegario Salas (Juan Minujín) makes his way through the crowd of mourners and into the residence, and goes inside. He’s known in the residence, so he’s able to freely visit Menem and offer his condolences. When he offers condolences to the mother of the boy in the casket, she yells out that he was murdered.
Flash back to 1987, in the province of La Roja. Salas is a photographer, taking portraits in the back of his photo store, which is also where he lives. Silvio Ayala (Marco A. Caponi), a former accountant and the right-hand man of then-governor Menem, comes to Salas with a job. Menem’s former photographer was killed and he needs someone to document a campaign rally; Menem is running for president and needs to win the primary of his party. Salas wasn’t a fan of “The Turk,” as he calls Menem, but Ayala convinces him to take the job.
Menem is certainly a charming man, and even at a rally where only a few people show up, he schmoozes with the best of them, making a dramatic entrance that Salas makes even more dramatic with his photographs.
Ayala then hires Salas to document Menem’s interaction with a famous burlesque performer during a show. It’s a calculated way to get Menem’s name and face out to the country, but to his wife Zulema Yoma (Griselda Siciliani), it’s just another example of his womanizing. She demands a divorce, but her brother tells her to hang in there, in case Menem wins the election, so “he can’t screw us over.”
The campaign staff, along with Salas, takes Menem out on a custom campaign bus so he can get face time with voters across Argentina. As we see a montage of him ingratiating himself with the populace, his poll numbers increase from the single digits to neck and neck with the party’s establishment candidate.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Menem has the feel of other biographical scripted dramas like Becoming Karl Lagerfeld.
Our Take: Menem, created by Mariano Varela, is the fictionalized story of Carlos Menem’s rise from relative obscurity to become president of Argentina; he served in that office between 1989 and 1999. What the drama is trying to convey is how unconventional a candidate Menem was. Whether the show succeeds in that is questionable.
Varela definitely chooses style over substance in the first episode, with random scenes of Salas breaking the fourth wall and the use of massive on-screen graphics explaining who each member of Menem’s campaign team was — and the flawed careers that they had to that point. The first episode starts off as more of a profile of Salas’ life, as we see him doing the job he was hired to do and seeing Menem’s charm up close. As far as Varela is concerned, Salas even encouraged Menem to keep his long hair and sideburns, despite his campaign staff’s desire to make him look more slick.
Perhaps scenes like these explain why Salas eventually became a central figure in Menem’s inner circle. But the first episode really careens back and forth between Salas’ perspective and Menem’s, to the point where we’re not sure if Menem is going to be shown with any depth or he’ll just be portrayed as a mutton-chopped caricature of the real-life political figure.
By the end of the first episode, Menem has won the primary, so we have yet to see him win the general election and preside over Argentina. We also haven’t seen how the 1994 AIMA bombing helped or hurt his re-election chances. We do know that his marriage to Zulema will be a major topic during the series, but not to what degree. Judging by the first episode, though, we get the feeling the season will be more of a series of vignettes about his presidency than an actual story.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Salas is about to make his way back to La Roja when he decides to take a bus back to Buenos Aires and rejoin the Menem campaign.
Sleeper Star: Griselda Siciliani’s character Zulema will become more significant as the series, and Menem’s presidency, goes along. In exchange for staying in the marriage to Menem, she negotiates being much more a part of his decision-making than he likely wanted her to be.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Zulema suggests someone to be Menem’s defense minister, Menem says that choice is “complicated.” “Do you listen when I speak, Menem? Or is there a train going by?” Zulema asks sarcastically.
Our Call: SKIP IT. Unless you have a keen interest in Argentinian politics, Menem doesn’t really provide enough of a story to hook people unfamiliar with the country’s recent history.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.