Los simuladores | |
---|---|
Genre | Comedy drama Suspense Mystery Black comedy Satire Thriller |
Created by | Damián Szifron |
Developed by | Damián Szifron |
Starring | Federico D'Elía Alejandro Fiore Diego Peretti Martín Seefeld |
Opening theme | "Cité Tango" by Astor Piazzolla |
Country of origin | Argentina |
Original language | Spanish |
No. of seasons | 2 |
No. of episodes | 24 |
Production | |
Camera setup | Multicamera setup |
Running time | 60 minutes |
Original release | |
Network | Telefe |
Release | 21 March 2002 5 January 2004 | –
Los simuladores (English: The Pretenders) is an Argentine television series about a small team of con artists for hire, who use their skills to solve common people's life problems. The show ran for two seasons, from 2002 to 2004. It was very popular and highly acclaimed, winning a Golden Martín Fierro Award. A number of remakes have been produced for various markets worldwide.
The original series was produced and aired by the Argentine network Telefé, and ran for two seasons (the first one with 13 episodes and the last one with 11) in 2002 and 2003. The series is occasionally shown in reruns on Telefé. Remakes were soon produced in Chile and in Spain (the latter produced by Cuatro), using some of the same actors and production members. Another remake was made in Russia. Since 2008, Sony Pictures Television International has produced a remake for Mexican television network Televisa.[1]
It was announced on March 18, 2022 that a film version and sequel to the TV series would be released in 2024, with the return of the original cast and co-creator Damián Szifron as the screenwriter and director.[2]
The series centers on a team of four associates who run a "simulation" business, solving the problems and needs of their clients by staging simulacros ("simulations", or confidence tricks) aimed at staging events that help the client come on top of the situation. The price the team charges for its services is exactly twice the cost of the simulation, as well as the client's promise to participate in future simulations. This leads to characters who appeared in previous episodes reappearing in later episodes as secondary actors and helpers for the team, giving the show a degree of continuity. The underlying philosophy used by the team is that sometimes what's legal is not fair, and sometimes what's fair is not legal.
In the second season of the show, a second Simuladores team is introduced. This group, known as the "B-Team" and composed of former clients of the original team (who had appeared on season 1), has been created to take over smaller cases and free the original team for larger and more demanding assignments.
The show is influenced by the literature work Los árboles mueren de pie (1949) by Alejandro Casona. This show shared elements with American 80s series like Stingray, The A-Team, Vengeance Unlimited and The Equalizer.
D'Elía, Seefeld, Peretti, and Fiore met while making an old action series, "Poliladron" in the mid-1990s. Diego Peretti is a psychiatrist in real life. The actor who plays Feller, Jorge D'Elía, is in real life Federico D'Elía's father. Santos is played by the same actor in the Argentine and Spanish versions.
Most of the characters' last names are from people known by producer Damian Szifron, in most cases from his childhood in Ramos Mejía.[citation needed]
On the remakes of the show in other countries sometimes the names of the main characters are conserved.
When Los simuladores are summoned by Santos, their cell phones ring like the show's opening theme, "Cité Tango", by Ástor Piazzolla.