In Superstar – or “Superestar” in Spanish, and not to be confused with Superstar, which also streams on Netflix – a woman realizes her lifelong pop star dreams, but not without her share of controversy along the way. And absurdities: this Superstar, from creator, director and co-writer Nacho Vigalondo, takes a fanciful route to showing and telling the story of Tamara, whose 2000 single “No Cambié” took Spain by storm. Vigalondo uses surreal flashbacks, interpretive glimpses of Tamara’s life and career, and for most of the first episode, has her appear like her mother always saw her: as a little girl, dancing on a bed and singing Culture Club songs into a curling iron.
Opening Shot: We’re on the set of Spanish variety show “Tiempo de Marte,” where we meet the host, Joaquín Sardana. (Sardana is played by Superstar creator Nacho Vigalondo, and Tiempo de Marte is a version of the real-life Spanish late night hit Crónicas Marcianas.)
The Gist: Sardana turns to the camera, and as the lights and stage of his show fade away, he says he once personally experienced something magical, or at least as magical as pop culture can get. “Celebrities who weren’t beautiful, who weren’t rich, and were far from normal. The phenomenon was named Tamarísmo.” Vigalondo will return throughout Superstar as Sardana, who becomes its narrator.
In real life, in Spain at the turn of the Millennium, a woman named Marimar Cuena Seisdedos found fame as a singer known as Tamara, whose appearances on shows like Crónicas and charting pop hits in “A Por Ti” and “No Cambié” ushered in Spain’s brief national love affair with unlikely entertainers. And in Superstar, the Tamarísmo effect is explored through the birth of Marimar, her upbringing, and her arrival on the pop scene as Tamara, a singer determined to be a star no matter the setbacks. And since she was always her mother’s daughter, for the early going of this boldly imagined series, Tamara is played not by Ingrid García-Jonsson, but by Sofía González as a 10-year-old kid in makeup, a leopard-print coat, and Cyndi Lauper hair.
With curious decisions like this, and lots of flashbacks, and a few vague dream sequences, and touches of animation elsewhere, Superstar expands on Tamara and her mother’s adventures. The journey from their Basque homeland to Madrid, the center of entertainment in Spain, where mom gives a hard stare to talent agent Miguel de Diego (Julián Villagrán). Tamara’s meeting with songwriter Leonardo Dantés (Secun de la Rosa). And Tamara’s career ascendance, which happens alongside her ever-present, overprotective mom, who must learn her own lessons of acceptance.
Eventually, Tamara will deal with overexposure, a fickle public, and even a popstar rival in Loly Álvarez (Natalia de Molina). And while Superstar follows the basic facts of Tamara’s real-life rise, it’s never with the intention of taking a conventional aesthetic path. More absurdities will surface. Like another person in Tamara’s orbit hallucinating his conversations with Michael Jackson. Or Superstar considering Tamara’s story of stardom from the perspective of a completely different timeline. What if she had never left Basque Country at all?
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? On Netflix, Ingrid García-Jonsson has also appeared in So My Grandma’s a Lesbian! and A Perfect Story. And an unreliable representation of Madrid’s past was also the setting for The Lady’s Companion, a Spanish series that like Superstar blended comedy, romance, and affectations like floating backdrops and breaking the fourth wall with great success. Or, we thought it was a great success. Netflix reportedly canceled Lady’s Companion after one season. So, good luck Superstar! Stay bold and weird! Maybe your streaming home will have more courage this time.
Shaking reality by its neck until entertaining stuff falls out might also be a specialty of Superstar creator Nacho Vigalondo. In 2016, Vigalondo wrote and directed the oddball charmer Colossal, where Anne Hathaway’s mania manifests as a giant Kaiju-style beast that attacks Seoul, South Korea.
And if the odd duck touches in Superstar get in the way of you learning more about Tamara’s story, Netflix released I’m Still a Superstar, a documentary about the singer’s life and career, at the same time as the series.
Our Take: While we were working to get our head around the imaginative, unpredictable storytelling of Superstar, we started asking one big question about Superstar. How long would this series about the rise of a popstar feature an actual kid dressed up as said popstar? This is a way of saying that not all of the fanciful elements in Superstar one hundred percent work one hundred percent of the time. The fun it’s having messing with structure and narrative can get in the way of characters at the center. Ingrid García-Jonsson, for example, seems to embody the real-life Tamara well. But García-Jonsson’s chance to shine in the role can be overshadowed by all of the absurd stuff happening.
At the same time, we’re happy the weird stuff is in here. It doesn’t sound like Tamarísmo was a conventional time in the pop culture history of Spain, anyway, and Superstar messing with the story in its bendy and imaginative way suggests the fluidity and hive mind inaccuracies of chronicling a big national story. Since everybody experienced it different, everybody’s memory of it is different. Superstar takes a lot of admirably big stylistic swings as it tries to mess with this idea.
Sex and Skin: Some, in brief. And when it does appear, it feels random – which in a show like Superstar that keeps you guessing, probably means that’s on purpose.
Parting Shot: We’re back on the set of Tiempo de Marte, this time during Tamara’s controversial reign in the public eye, and the hosts are not being nice about her daughter. So it’s a good thing Margarita brought the brick in her purse.
Sleeper Star: Rocío Ibáñez is great in Superstar as Margarita, Tamara’s mother. The series makes Margarita’s out-of-place-ness a visual gag – a mom in her overcoat and old jewelry, standing in a nightclub. Or falling asleep in a recording studio. But in these scenes, it’s Ibáñez who makes the character work.
Most Pilot-y Line: Visiting record labels, Tamara and her mother are often ignored or left sitting in the reception area for hours. No matter. “You’re still waiting? Don’t you have anything better to do?”
Tamara: “I’m an artist. Of course I don’t.”
Our Call: Stream It. Superstar is heavy on creative ways to tell a story and in love with its absurdist cues as the series relates a tale of predestined stardom, the unpredictability of pop culture groupthink, and the ultimate price of fame.
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.