The Spanish dramedy “Rage” (in Spanish, with subtitles), debuting on Friday night at 8 on HBO Latino, is a distinctive anthology of female anger. Each episode includes a true plate-smashing meltdown, the culmination of decades of frustration and neglect. People rip cabinets off the wall, light fires, destroy entire kitchens. And while the show has an amped-up soapy lilt, all the indignation is grounded in real despair and grief.
The stories connect and coincide; some of the women are neighbors, or catch glimpses of each other on television. Some of the women are rich and impulsive while others scrounge for each rent check, but disappointment knows no tax bracket. A prized pig wanders through the chapters connecting the arcs, too.
Marga (Carmen Machi) is a visual artist and hobbyist markswoman whose slick husband is sleeping with their housekeeper, Tina (Claudia Salas). Tina’s mom, Adela (Nathalie Poza), struggles to make ends meet while taking care of her own ailing mother. Nat (Candela Peña), prim and stylish, loves her job at a high-end department store … until she is forced out by a blasé boss who prefers to hire less-qualified Instagram influencers.
Vera (Pilar Castro), a celebrity chef, vents to her pal Marga about how hopeless she feels, how sinister the world seems to her. But it isn’t just perception, it is also projection: She winds up torturing a journalist who antagonizes her. “We’re all just selfishness, meanness and madness,” she tells him while he’s tied to a table.
When Victoria (Cecilia Roth) realizes the award she is getting is sponsorship nonsense and not a belated recognition of her work, the humiliation overwhelms her, and we watch this tidal wave of self-recrimination crash on shore. Have I been a fool this whole time? How much of my life have I wasted operating under these misapprehensions about myself, about the world?
Everything on “Rage” escalates, quickly, and the behaviors are extreme — and exciting. While the characters are motivated by pain, the show itself is bright and funny, colorful and surprising. Two episodes air on Friday and the remaining six air weekly after that.
Margaret Lyons is a television critic at The Times, and writes the TV parts of the Watching newsletter.
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