Stream It Or Skip It?
Have you ever met someone and fell for them at a strange time in your life? Maybe you’re going to move far away, or you have a health issue you need to deal with, or some other life-changing event is on the horizon. Do you forge ahead, thinking you don’t find relationships like this all the time, or do you pull back, thinking that the timing couldn’t be worse? A new Apple TV+ dramedy from Spain shows two people connecting at a strange time in each of their lives.
Opening Shot: A closeup of a man in a hospital bed. He’s being prepared for heart surgery. He is told to think happy thoughts. The man asks if he’s going to wake up during surgery. When he is told to count until the anesthetic kicks in, his mind flashes through moments of his best relationship.
The Gist: Three weeks earlier, Raúl (Joan Amargós), the man who was being prepped for heart surgery, is talking to his soon-to-be-former roommate Edu (Cristian Valencia) about his lightheadedness; he is about to get it checked out by a doctor. That’s when he finds out he has an angiosarcoma, which is a cancerous tumor in his heart. Chemo isn’t feasible given where it is; a risky surgery is the only way to get the tumor out. And it has to be done in two weeks — well, three, because the OR is booked up in two weeks.
He tells Edu about the tumor, but not his girlfriend Georgina (Paula Malia); she’s excited about the prospect of moving in once Edu moves out. Given what’s on his mind, Raúl’s lack of enthusiasm is obvious, but since Georgina has no idea about the tumor, she interprets it another way. As they look for plants for the apartment, she springs on him that they need to break up. He’s just not bringing enough energy to the relationship, something they talk about while on line to pay.
In the meantime, a woman named Marta (Veronica Echegui) is partying at some random apartment when she realizes she has to go to a funeral in a few hours. Her jacket has disappeared, so she needs her work phone. She drags a random guy she met there along as she heads to her office at an advertising firm to pick up her work phone, then leaves him parked with the Uber driver at the house of her sister Ana (Claudia Melo) to borrow a dress. That’s where she finds out that her pregnant sister is holding a baby shower and she wasn’t invited. She decides to stick around a bit, long enough to crap on parenthood and tell the gathered moms-to-be that they’ll all poop as they give birth.
After Georgina leaves Raúl at the garden store, he has Edu pick him up. But Edu was on his way to a funeral. There, Raúl seems to connect with the deceased man’s widow about the idea that she was his entire life and vice versa. Marta walks into the service in progress, and gasps loudly when she sees the pregnancy test she just peed on before walking in give a positive result. When she gives an impromptu speech about her dead friend doing the best he could in life, Raúl notices.
Photo: Apple TV+
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Love You To Death (Original Title: A Muerte), has the same feel as other shows we’ve seen about unlikely couples who get together in unusual circumstances, like Colin From Accounts and You’re The Worst.Our Take: Created by Dani de la Orden, Love You To Death is going to show Raúl and Marta connecting and having a whirlwind romance in the three weeks leading up to Raúl’s surgery, with all the ups and downs associated with it. Despite being ostensibly a comedy, we get the feeling that most of what we’re going to see is going to be romantic, dramatic and sometimes emotional, because both people in this new relationship are going through such extreme circumstances.
Marta’s pregnancy and Raúl’s cancer are the complicating factors that make this more than just the usual romcom. Without both factors, this is basically a standard “reserved guy meets free spirited girl” situation, where the girl makes the guy feel more alive and the guy makes the girl want to settle down more than at any time in her life. But, because of their respective medical conditions, those timetables get accelerated.
Raúl has been cautious his whole life, so the idea that he may not have a lot of time left and he’s with this dynamic woman may make him change more than he even realizes. And Marta may take the pregnancy as a chance to make a change she never realized she wanted. Just the examination of those dynamics will make this show interesting to follow.
Photo: Apple TV+
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.Parting Shot: Marta blows off the guy she left the party with to have a drink with Raúl. For his part, Raúl gets encouragement from Edu.
Sleeper Star: Cristian Valencia is funny as Edu, who seems to be the only person Raúl really trusts.
Most Pilot-y Line: We felt bad for the poor guy that Marta dragged everywhere; he likely hoped he was going get lucky if he hung in with her all day, but boy was he wrong.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Love You To Death has the potential to be a sweet, occasionally funny, mostly emotional story of two people getting together at a strange time in each of their lives.
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.
