Los Espookys is a sweet, wacky ode to the strange wrinkles in everyday existance

Decider

The HBO comedy from Fred Armisen, Julio Torres and Ana Fabrega is bizarre and brazenly silly. It's also a beautiful nightmare of a comedy show, says Meghan O'Keefe. "Believe me when I say that Los Espookys hit me like a cool blast of refreshing air," says O'Keefe. "Unlike most prestige comedies of the day, which lean hard into existential dread and cinematic gloss, Los Espookys revels in its chintz and camp. Whether it’s the show’s steadfast devotion to the horror genre or its many riffs on telenovela clichés, this is a comedy series that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Because of that, the sharp, careful joke writing of series co-creators Julio Torres and Ana Fabrega takes center stage, making Los Espookys a bonkers comedy gift brimming with weirdness and exploding with creativity. The show even uses its bilingual cast to amp up the comedy in a way no other American comedy show has yet attempted."

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• Los Espookys is a comedic rarity: "Some of the best TV shows are the ones that are just about impossible to describe," says Caroline Framke. "Shows that are wild and weird, pushing the confines of what TV has been and 'should' be, TV that proudly plants its freak flag in your face and dares you to question it. For all that — plus the important fact that it’s very, very funny — Los Espookys had my full attention from the jump."
• It colors outside the lines, it speaks its own language: "The show sidesteps all the traditional framing viewers have come to expect of TV, even as streaming platforms have widened access to disparate scenes and communities," says Jason Parham. "Like the best of TV in the last half-decade, Los Espookys soars because it stays true to what it set out to be. It’s intimate, adorably strange, meticulous in its oddball humor, and unburdened by the pressure of the audience."
• Los Espookys is a droll delight: The half-hour comedy is "a low-key and absurdist romp in that Baskets or What We Do in the Shadows vein of shows that absolutely won't tickle everybody — the unconventional Friday 11 p.m. time slot acknowledges that — but will probably generate fierce devotion among the audience able to communicate on its strange wavelength," says Daniel Fienberg.
• Los Espookys recalls Flight of the Conchords: "The handmade look and understated punchlines recall another HBO comedy about realizing creative ambitions on a shoestring—though Flight Of The Conchords never featured a parasitic demon who’ll only divulge their host’s secret past after getting to watch a middle-of-the-road Best Picture winner," says Erik Adams.
• The spirit of Scooby-Doo is alive and well in Los Espookys, though it’s more like Scooby-Doo in reverse
• Los Espookys is proudly silly and weird, even more than Fred Armisen’s work on Portlandia or Documentary Now!
• Los Espookys is a wonderfully bizarre love letter to the weird
• Los Espookys is not exactly funny, not in the way Armisen fans are accustomed: "It doesn't play for laughs or punchlines, or setups or gags"
• Fred Armisen's intent with Los Espookys wasn't just to create a Spanish-language show: He says wanted a show “that isn’t an explanation of Latino culture, that’s moving past the foreignness of it...It’s not as if people haven’t heard of Latino culture before. It’s a part of American culture. It’s a shorthand with everyone.”