Self-centered information anchor Tulio Triviño and his reporter greatest buddy Juan Carlos Bodoque, who has a playing downside, have amused audiences for 22 years. Neither has aged a day. That’s as a result of they’re hand puppets — a monkey in a swimsuit and a pink rabbit in a striped shirt, respectively — on the forefront of the beloved Chilean TV present “31 Minutos.”
First conceived as a youngsters’s program for Chile’s public tv, “31 Minutos” debuted in March 2003, and now spans 4 seasons. A parody of a conventional newscast, the irreverent idea options dozens of strange puppets who populate the fictional city of Titirilquén. Their sharply absurdist misadventures and reportages are accompanied by pun-heavy, humorous unique songs.
“The Muppets and ‘Sesame Avenue’ have been nice inspirations for us,” says co-creator Pedro Peirano talking in Spanish from Santiago, Chile, throughout a current Zoom interview. “However we combined that with a extra Latin American idiosyncrasy, so it’s acquainted however very totally different.”
Peirano voices and puppeteers Tulio, whereas Álvaro Díaz, the present’s different co-creator, provides life to Bodoque (who began out as a inexperienced toad earlier than taking up his rabbit type). Amongst their fabric-made buddies are Patana, Tulio’s niece who’s a duck, discipline reporter Mario Hugo, a Chihuahua in a swimsuit, and Juanín, a fuzzy white creature with no seen eyes, the newscast’s producer.
“What we got down to do, I don’t know if consciously, was to create characters who aren’t function fashions of something,” says Peirano. “They’ve their flaws and their virtues; in reality, they’ve extra flaws, particularly Tulio, who’s a villain, however he’s additionally the face of the present.”
Over time, because the present’s reputation grew throughout Latin America, “31 Minutos” has transcended the small display and spilled into different codecs. Via Aplaplac, their manufacturing firm, Díaz and Peirano have created “31 Minutos” dwell reveals that tour the area, a theatrically launched characteristic movie, and even an bold museum exhibit.
This fall, “31 Minutos” units its sights on the worldwide market with the discharge of “Calurosa Navidad” (One Sizzling Christmas), their first particular for Prime Video, streaming on Friday. The Spanish-language movie comes on the heels of one other huge second for the puppet troupe, once they carried out a few of their hits on NPR’s “Tiny Desk” final month.
Co-creators Álvaro Díaz, left, and Pedro Peirano on the set of “31 Minutos: Calurosa Navidad.” (Sebastian Utreras)
Though “31 Minutos” emerged as children’ programming, Díaz and Peirano sidestepped expectations for message-driven storylines.
“In Latin America we are inclined to confuse youngsters’s tv with academic tv, as if every part must be an extension of faculty,” says Díaz. “We wished to rapidly remodel it from that into extra of a household present.”
The duo met whereas learning journalism on the Universidad de Chile within the late Eighties, because the nation transitioned from a dictatorship to a democracy. It was their appropriate humor, a shared curiosity in movie, and a want to discover quite a lot of mediums that introduced them collectively.
“We had plenty of free time to develop our pursuits,” says Díaz. “And also you join by these pursuits, much more in order that’s primarily based in your character or your origins.”
Earlier than “31 Minutos,” Díaz and Peirano already had expertise working in written media and tv, so their impulse was to parody the information world they had been aware of.
When first creating the present, which they produced after profitable public funding, the puppets appeared considerably organically, Díaz says, as a result of neither he nor Peirano wished to be on digicam. And for the reason that undertaking was initially geared towards youngsters, it appeared applicable.
A scene from Prime Video’s “31 Minutos: Calurosa Navidad.” “We believed that by placing puppets in entrance of the digicam — initially quite simple puppets — youngsters would instantly determine with them,” says co-creator Álvaro Díaz.
(Amazon MGM Studios)
“We believed that by placing puppets in entrance of the digicam — initially quite simple puppets — youngsters would instantly determine with them, and we wouldn’t be compelled to emphasise the youngsters’s tone a lot,” recollects Díaz. “Quite the opposite, the puppets had been a automobile that allowed us to inform tales that us.”
And whereas it was Díaz who first recommended puppets, Peirano, who can be a comic book e book creator, was a lifelong fan of Jim Henson and the worlds he created, together with extra grownup fare like “The Darkish Crystal.” The primary puppets they used had been those who Peirano had made as a toddler. As self-taught puppeteers, Díaz and Peirano honed their craft alongside the best way.
“It’s less expensive and quicker to make puppets and create this fantastical world than to supply animation,” says Peirano. “Puppets have an immediacy that additionally makes them enjoyable to carry out with and to improvise with.”
As is commonly the case with youngsters’s reveals, they wanted to include music. Peirano introduced alongside his buddy Pablo Ilabaca, the guitarist and composer of Chilean rock band Chancho en Piedra, who tangentially had created tracks that might work for the present.
“He confirmed us that music, and we instantly felt that the sound of the ’31 Minutos’ was there,” says Díaz. “There was a lo-fi high quality about it. It had one thing candid that didn’t essentially have an childish tone however had a lightness. And we might add lyrics to that music.”
The editorial line for the songs was to validate childhood experiences with out attempting to impart any life classes, acknowledging these emotions by comedy.
“There’s a music known as ‘Diente Blanco’ [White Tooth], for instance, which isn’t concerning the significance of brushing or caring for your enamel however, quite, a couple of youngster saying goodbye to a tooth he was very keen on,” explains Díaz.
As a father of three (who he hopes will ultimately tackle the present’s mantle), Díaz operates from a conviction that younger audiences deserve high quality content material that’s not patronizing nor simplistic.
“The leisure choices for kids in Latin America, and usually all over the place, are very poor,” says Díaz. “It’s largely about extracting cash from mother and father with disappointing choices. As type of a governing precept for ’31 Minutos,’ we wish these choices to enhance.”
“31 Minutos” quickly grew to become entrenched in Chilean standard tradition. Peirano remembers the precise second when he realized its cross-generational affect.
“I heard somebody whistling the present’s theme music, and it wasn’t a toddler — it was an grownup sweeping the road,” he says. “That was the primary time I stated, ‘How unusual, somebody is definitely watching it!’ ”
Pedro Peirano remembers the second he realized “31 Minutos” was changing into entrenched in Chilean popular culture. “I heard somebody whistling the present’s theme music, and it wasn’t a toddler — it was an grownup sweeping the road,” he says.
(Sebastian Utreras)
For Díaz, it was when he heard the album with the primary batch of songs, launched about 4 months after the present’s debut, enjoying in a number of file shops round Santiago. Not lengthy after that, they noticed the primary bootleg merchandise: a toy model of Mico, el Micófono, a personality that’s only a microphone with googly eyes that road distributors might simply replicate.
Internationally, Mexico grew to become a key marketplace for “31 Minutos.” The creators first realized that nation’s adoration for the present when an e mail handle the place viewers might write to Tulio was flooded with extra messages from Mexico than Chile.
A tribute album, “Yo Nunca Vi Tv” (I By no means Watched Tv), the place Mexican and Chilean bands reinterpreted songs from “31 Minutos,” was launched in 2009. The present’s museum exhibit, “Museo 31,” visited two Mexican cities (Mexico Metropolis and Monterrey) between 2024 and 2025 after its time in Santiago at Centro Cultural La Moneda.
Díaz believes that “31 Minutos” benefited from evolving in entrance of a younger viewers who accepted the present’s peculiarities at face worth. The business lately, he thinks, calls for each narrative selection be justified with substantial which means.
“You now have to put in writing with an express intention and provides every part coherence, as if life is a collection of very coherent interconnections,” Díaz says. “It’s unattainable to make one thing like ‘31 Minutos’ at this time.”
That’s very true, of their eyes, of the U.S. leisure business the place one should “perceive enjoyable all the way down to its smallest element” even earlier than something has been produced.
“A lot of the enjoyable of creating ’31 Minutos’ has to do with spontaneity,” says Díaz.
However, their “Tiny Desk” live performance and the Christmas particular have introduced them to their closest proximity but to American audiences.
To arrange for his or her “Tiny Desk” efficiency, which options among the present’s most emblematic puppets, the “31 Minutos” group re-created the set in Santiago — a famously tight area the place bands are sandwiched between a desk and overflowing bookshelves. “We needed to scale back the concept of ‘31 minutes’ to twenty minutes in a small area, with out lighting, with out particular results,” explains Díaz.
Tapping into present occasions, the working joke of their “Tiny Desk” look is that their work visas will expire instantly after performing.
“We didn’t intend to make a political assertion, however since we had been in the USA, what’s the joke within the air? That they’re going to kick us — as Latin Individuals, the joke is all the time that the U.S. needs us out,” says Peirano. “Ultimately, it nonetheless finally ends up being a commentary, and we included this crocodile puppet [as an immigration agent] as a result of that’s the satirical nature of ‘31 Minutos.’ ”
In the meantime, making “Calurosa Navidad” for Prime Video fulfilled their purpose of coming into the streaming realm. Amazon was considering style movies, and so they opted for a Christmas one.
Followers of “31 Minutos” will acknowledge that the story, by which Bodoque has to seek for Santa and convey him to heat-stricken Titirilquén; it’s the growth of a narrative from an earlier particular Christmas episode that later developed right into a Christmas dwell present. The cheeky appeal stays intact, however now it’s going to be accessible to a worldwide viewers.
At present, Peirano splits his time between Santiago and Los Angeles. Within the U.S., away from the media empire that “31 Minutos” has in-built Latin America, he works as a screenwriter. His credit embrace the HBO collection “Perry Mason.” He’s engaged on a undertaking for horror outfit Blumhouse with collaborator Mauricio Katz. The 2 not too long ago signed an unique total take care of Sony Footage Tv.
However don’t count on Tulio or Bodoque to talk English anytime quickly or for his or her adventures to be crafted outdoors of their South American homeland. Díaz has no want to go away Chile.
“I dwell 5 kilometers from the hospital the place I used to be born. And that’s the farthest I may be,” he says. “Chile is the fact that I perceive, and, above all, that nourishes us. I prefer to journey and go on tour, however I hope issues all the time occur right here, with the individuals we all know right here.”
Díaz cites director Peter Jackson’s ethos to establishing WETA FX, a world-renowned digital results firm, in his dwelling nation of New Zealand as a substitute of transferring overseas, as a mindset that resembles their very own — in admittedly a smaller scale.
“What we advocate for in ‘31 Minutos’ is creative excellence from Chile,” Díaz provides. “From Chile to Latin America first, and hopefully from Chile to the world.”
