The series „Cochinas" on Prime Video has conquered Spain. The lead is Malena Alterio - and the irony is perfect: a series about a housewife in Valladolid in 1998, who after her husband's coma is forced to take over the video shop, has turned into the platform's most-watched hit.

The plot rides the line between grotesque and social drama. Nines, conservative to the bone, walks into disaster: her husband is in a coma, „El Doroty" - the family video shop - is in debt. One solution works: specialising in the one genre that brings money. Porn. The video shop becomes the city's first erotic club, then a meeting place where women from the neighbourhood make their own discoveries and confessions.

The series is produced by Carlos del Hoyo and Irene Bohoyo, directed by three women - Andrea Jaurrieta, Laura M. Campos and Nuria Gago. That means something. Spanish female producers in recent years have been shifting the landscape of TV humour: less male cynicism, more psychological depth without sentimentality.

For the Balkans this is interesting because 1998 in Valladolid feels close to our 1998. Back then video shops were the centre of every neighbourhood here too. Back then men hid their interest in porn behind two stacks of action films. When a woman takes over the shop - is that shame or liberation? The series doesn't give an easy answer. That's exactly why it works.

Malena Alterio - in Spain an icon of the „worn-out housewife" - finds here a role that lifts her career. She doesn't play for comic effect - she plays a role where the funny and the tragic have no border.