The brilliant comedy of Los Espookys is finally back ... and it's still unlike anything else on TV

Queeries is a column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens. 

Given the oversaturated nature of all that has come to be defined as "television" today, it's next to impossible to stand out as a show unlike anything else. But the HBO series Los Espookys is so singularly surrealist, inventive and unabashedly queer that it is undeniably that rare example — which is why it was so difficult to wait over three years for the arrival of its second season.

Created by Julio Torres, Ana Fabrega and Fred Armisen, Los Espookys debuted in the far-off land of the summer of 2019 to much acclaim and a quick renewal for season 2. But the largely Spanish-language show — which follows a group of friends (Torres, Fabrega, Bernardo Velasco and Cassandra Ciangherotti) who turn their love of horror into a business where they fabricate horror film-like situations and trick people into thinking they're real — found itself in the midst of its own horror story when production on that season began.

Shooting in Chile in early 2020, they were roughly halfway through shooting the second season when things abruptly shut down due to you-know-what. 

"We went through that phase that I think the whole world went through that was like, 'We'll resume in two weeks,'" Torres recounted onstage alongside Armisen and Fabrega at Toronto's Just For Laughs Comedy Con last week, which showcased Los Espookys. "And then two weeks became two months and two months became six months and a year became two years."

"Productions in the U.S. started out fairly quickly — [after] a few months, max. Everyone was like, risking their lives to make their Netflix movies."

But because their team was shooting in Chile, they had to wait for that country's much more cautious restrictions to loosen up. When they finally got the green light, it was a joyous moment.

"Going back to Chile, because of the pandemic, it was just this renewed love for travel," Armisen said. "Whereas before it was just sort of like, 'This is a workplace,' now it was like, 'I'm so happy to be there."

Fabrega added that to her, it like the safest place they could have been.

"Their COVID protocols were so intense — they were really on top of things," she said. "When we first went down at the beginning of this year to finish shooting, cases were rising [in the U.S.]. Everyone was getting into panic mode. We get down to Chile and their cases are like nothing. They're all triple boosted. They're wearing their masks. Like, 'Ok, we're not going to get shut down because of COVID here because it's so well-managed.'"

They were, indeed, not shut down, and the second season Los Espookys debuted last month on HBO (and on Crave here in Canada), with episodes continuing through October. The scripts that were used are the same as the ones they wrote back in 2019, and the first few episodes suggest time did nothing to erode the show's brilliance. If anything, the show expands its universe — including via new characters played by Roma actress Yalitza Aparicio, singer Kim Petras and the legendary Isabella Rossellini — so effectively that it somehow even gets better. 

"I think that what happened in the second season was that the individual journeys of the characters became richer," Torres said. "So then the gag of having a prank every episode took a back seat to wanting to spend more time with, say, [Fabrega's character] Tati at home and what that was like. It's also a way of surprising an audience and not tiring them."

"I think, too, that it became a little more abstract and surreal, just naturally," Fabrega adds. "I think when we were writing the first season, it felt like, 'Oh, we have to do it this way.' And then by the end of it, we felt that it had kind of found its rhythm and its groove. It became more about these abstract things."

In turn, it feels just as organic for us viewers to embrace the second season's direction — and to just be grateful it's back on our television screen, right in time for espooky season.

Los Espookys streams Fridays on Crave in Canada and HBO Max in the U.S.