In our single days, we would watch, um, “not conventionally attractive” male characters in movies and TV shows somehow attract beautiful women and we’d truly get upset. Yes, that means just about every CBS sitcom of the late ’90s- early ’00s annoyed the crap out of us. But there are times when a show really understands why two people whom you might not think would ever get together end up in each other’s arms. A new Argentinian dark comedy, based on a true story, is one of those shows.
Opening Shot: From above, we see a flamenco dancer spinning around.
The Gist: Ariel Santoro (Alan Sabbagh) is a 45-year-old ghostwriter and poet from Buenos Aires who, in a flash-forward interview-style scene, admits that he was overweight and “smoked like a chimney.” His life isn’t exactly stress-free, either; he’s sleeping on the couch of his home because he and his wife Isabel (Eleonora Wexler) are having issues.
David (Sebastián Berta Muñiz) he owner of the publishing house where Ariel works, is also his lifelong friend. “Chubby,” as David calls Ariel, is a great guy but gets in his own way. David also feels that Ariel’s infertility hasn’t helped his marriage.
David has a great assignment for Ariel: Ghosting a book about a famous lawyer, Augusto Briganti (Rafael Spregelburd). It pays more than Ariel’s usual assignments but it needs to be done in 30 days, a deadline Ariel feels is impossible. But he agrees to put a jacket and tie on and meet the lawyer for dinner.
First, though, he meets Isa, a fitness instructor, to make his case for the two of them to keep their marriage together. Isa, though, wants Ariel out of the house, esepcially because she’s fallen in love with someone else. She still loves Ariel, but thinks this will be a fresh start for both of them.
After meeting with Briganti and making a handshake agreement to the compressed timeline, the group goes to a club next door. On stage, a beautiful flamenco dancer seems to have her eyes on Ariel as she dances. When he smokes outside, he ends up meeting the dancer, a Spanish woman nicknamed Concha, but whose real name is Maria (Olivia Molina). She tells him he had no contacts on and used his bright-orange tie to orient herself. Still, the two are taken a bit with each other. Ariel thinks it’s a good time to stop smoking — until he finds out who Isa is in love with.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? We’re not sure why, but the dark comedy Baskets keeps coming to mind when trying to find a comp for The Best Heart Attack Of My Life.
Our Take: The Best Heart Attack Of My Life is based on a real-life incident captured in the book of the same name by Hernán Casciari. It involves Casciari having a massive heart attack in an Airbnb in Uruguay, and how the owners of the house he was renting helped save his life.
The second episode leads us up to that heart attack (there’s a “heartbeats until attack” counter that pops up in the corner of the screen for some reason). Ariel is distraught over Isa, and when Choncha gets in touch with him, he impulsively invites her to a poetry reading David has arranged for him in Uruguay. She comes because she’s running away from a controlling boyfriend. Their relationship blossoms, but his weight, smoking and vigorous sex make the ticking time bomb in his chest go off.
We will not only get to know more about Concha as the season goes along, but also about Alejandra (Romina Peluffo) and Javier (Rogelio Gracia) the owners of the Airbnb who help Ariel. It’s supposed to be a feelgood story, even if it’s presented as a dark comedy.
Through the first two episodes, though, what we see is a chubby bald dude who seems to be pretty sad and, as his future self says in the interview-style segments, was a heart attack waiting to happen. We don’t 100 percent buy how he connects with Concha, but it could just be a mutual desire to be somewhere else, away from all the problems in their lives. Given how long it takes us to get to the heart attack in the show’s title, though, we’re not sure how deep we’re going to get into any of these characters’ lives.
Sex and Skin: We see both. In the first episode, the person Isa is sleeping with is topless.
Parting Shot: At the end of the first episode, Ariel goes back to the trashcan where he threw out his cigarettes and pulls the pack out.
Sleeper Star: Olivia Molina’s magnetic performance makes us root for Concha, and we even hope that she and Ariel end up together.
Most Pilot-y Line: We know that seeing Ariel tear a garbage bin off its mount and grabbing the pack he threw away makes for a dynamic final scene, but he’s in Buenos Aires. Couldn’t he have simply bought a fresh pack of cigs?
Our Call: STREAM IT. While we’re a bit skeptical about how the story proceeds, there’s enough about The Best Heart Attack Of My Life to keep us curious about how Ariel’s cardiac infarction became the best thing that ever happened to him.
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.
