Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Los Espookys’ On HBO, Fred Armisen’s Show About A Team Of Professional Scare-Makers

If you like your comedy weird, then you’re likely a fan of Fred Armisen. He not only plays slightly creepy, slightly weird normcore guys on shows like Forever, but he amps the weird up on shows he writes and produces, like the recently-ended Portlandia. Now he’s paired with a couple of young comedy writers to make a Spanish-language show about a group of friends who create a business where people hire them to scare other people. Read on for more about Los Espookys….

LOS ESPOOKYS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A very gory and spooky quinceañera, complete with finger hors d’oeuvres served by blood-spurting waiters and a maggot-filled cake. The guest of honor is in white makeup as if she was a vampire.

The Gist: The girl is visited by her uncle Tico (Fred Armisen), who arrives from LA still wearing his valet parking service jacket. When he finds out that her brother Renaldo (Bernardo Velasco) did all of the creepy decorations, he encourages his nephew to go into business.

The next morning, Renaldo gets a cal from the local priest looking for their services, based on what they did at the quinceañera. He finds his friends Andrés (Julio Torres), a blue-haired weirdo who’s also the heir of a family with a massive chocolate business, and Úrsula (Cassandra Ciangherotti), a dental technician, to join him at the orphanage where the priest works. Good thing they’re going there, because Úrsula’s oddball sister Tati (Ana Fabrega) works there.

The priest wants them to stage an exorcism, just to bring him back to relevance; a younger, more handsome priest is stealing their thunder. Tati readily agrees to be the possessed girl, who pukes orange and spins around. The gang cook up a mock-up of Renaldo’s severed head and sent it to Tico, one of the best parkers LA has ever seen, so he can give it to an addled anchor of a local Inside Edition-type show.

Through a lot of cables, lighting and other special effects, the exorcism is pulled off brilliantly. They get another call from a mysterious woman, who asks them what their company is called. Renaldo replies, “Los Espookys”.

Our Take: We thought that Los Espookys was going to be so much weirder than the show we actually saw. But the fact that we were pleasantly surprised by this show’s straightforwardness and earnest tone actually makes us like this so much better.

Armisen is one of the show’s executive producers, along with Fabrega (The Chris Gethard Show) and Torres, who writes for SNL. It’s mostly in Spanish, and it takes place in an unnamed Latin American city (originally, it was supposed to be Mexico City, but the trio decided to make it more generic). Given Armisen’s twisted sense of humor, we felt that the show would be like Portlandia: alternately quirky, head-scratching, and hilarious.

Don’t get us wrong; Los Espookys has moments like that, like when the older priest over-describes the younger priest’s wet lips, or fires Tati for not spinning his fan fast enough. Andrés’s boyfriend Juan Carlos (José Pablo Minor) who is basically a set of abs who thinks he’s going to inherit the chocolate fortune with Andrés. A lengthy flashback explaining Tico’s parking skills is shown. So the quirks that Armisen is famous for pop up in the first episode.

But the overall vibe is more easygoing than anything else, with these four friends living in a city that has a taste for the spooky and macabre. It seems like each episode will have the four putting together another weird and scary situation, peppered with b-stories about various members of the gang, Tico, and others. If they’re all as fun as the first episode was, we’re on board.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: The mysterious woman on the phone asks the gang to help her scare five potential heirs of a billionaire spending a night in his “haunted” house, a condition of his will. “We’ve got another gig!” Renaldo says.

Sleeper Star: Fabrega is pretty funny as the weird-ass Tati. When the priest fires her from her fan-spinning job, she blankly says, “Well, that’s life. One minute you’re a fan, the next you’re not.”

Most Pilot-y Line: Tico goes into a high-powered party to hand the head to the news anchor. When he’s there, he’s confused for an avant-garde artist. Then when he sees the anchor, he abruptly leaves. It’s a scene that goes nowhere and adds little to the episode.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Los Espookys is one of those shows that is a fun binge, either piled up on your DVR or on HBOs Go and NOW. Armisen and company dial back the weird just enough to create characters that we want to follow as they try to scare the people in their hometown.

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, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Los Espookys on HBO