The irreverent puppets of Chile's '31 Minutos' hope to win over the world with 'Calurosa Navidad'

Self-centered quality anchor Tulio Triviño and his newsman champion person Juan Carlos Bodoque, who has a gambling problem, person amused audiences for 22 years. Neither has aged a day. That’s due to the fact that they are manus puppets — a monkey successful a suit and a reddish rabbit successful a striped shirt, respectively — astatine the forefront of the beloved Chilean TV amusement “31 Minutos.”

First conceived arsenic a children’s programme for Chile’s nationalist television, “31 Minutos” debuted successful March 2003, and present spans 4 seasons. A parody of a accepted newscast, the irreverent conception features dozens of peculiar puppets who populate the fictional municipality of Titirilquén. Their sharply absurdist misadventures and reportages are accompanied by pun-heavy, humorous archetypal songs.

“The Muppets and ‘Sesame Street’ person been large inspirations for us,” says co-creator Pedro Peirano speaking successful Spanish from Santiago, Chile, during a caller Zoom interview. “But we mixed that with a much Latin American idiosyncrasy, truthful it’s acquainted but precise different.”

Peirano voices and puppeteers Tulio, portion Álvaro Díaz, the show’s different co-creator, gives beingness to Bodoque (who started retired arsenic a greenish toad earlier taking connected his rabbit form). Among their fabric-made pals are Patana, Tulio’s niece who is simply a duck, tract newsman Mario Hugo, a Chihuahua successful a suit, and Juanín, a fuzzy achromatic carnal with nary disposable eyes, the newscast’s producer.

“What we acceptable retired to do, I don’t cognize if consciously, was to make characters who are not relation models of anything,” says Peirano. “They person their flaws and their virtues; successful fact, they person much flaws, particularly Tulio, who is simply a villain, but he’s besides the look of the show.”

Over the years, arsenic the show’s popularity grew crossed Latin America, “31 Minutos” has transcended the tiny surface and spilled into different formats. Through Aplaplac, their accumulation company, Díaz and Peirano person created “31 Minutos” unrecorded shows that circuit the region, a theatrically released diagnostic film, and adjacent an ambitious depository exhibit.

This fall, “31 Minutos” sets its sights connected the planetary marketplace with the merchandise of “Calurosa Navidad” (One Hot Christmas), their archetypal peculiar for Prime Video, streaming connected Friday. The Spanish-language movie comes connected the heels of different large infinitesimal for the puppet troupe, erstwhile they performed immoderate of their hits connected NPR’s “Tiny Desk” past month.

Co-creators Álvaro Díaz, left, and Pedro Peirano connected the acceptable of “31 Minutos: Calurosa Navidad.” (Sebastian Utreras)

Although “31 Minutos” emerged arsenic kids’ programming, Díaz and Peirano sidestepped expectations for message-driven storylines.

“In Latin America we thin to confuse children’s tv with acquisition television, arsenic if everything has to beryllium an hold of school,” says Díaz. “We wanted to rapidly alteration it from that into much of a household show.”

The duo met portion studying journalism astatine the Universidad de Chile successful the precocious 1980s, arsenic the state transitioned from a dictatorship to a democracy. It was their compatible humor, a shared involvement successful film, and a tendency to research a assortment of mediums that brought them together.

“We had a batch of escaped clip to make our interests,” says Díaz. “And you link done those interests, adjacent much truthful that’s based connected your property oregon your origins.”

Before “31 Minutos,” Díaz and Peirano already had acquisition moving successful written media and television, truthful their impulse was to parody the quality satellite they were acquainted with.

When archetypal processing the show, which they produced aft winning nationalist funding, the puppets appeared somewhat organically, Díaz says, due to the fact that neither helium nor Peirano wanted to beryllium connected camera. And since the task was primitively geared toward children, it seemed appropriate.

A country from Prime Video’s “31 Minutos: Calurosa Navidad.” “We believed that by putting puppets successful beforehand of the camera — initially precise elemental puppets — children would instantly place with them,” says co-creator Álvaro Díaz.

(Amazon MGM Studios)

“We believed that by putting puppets successful beforehand of the camera — initially precise elemental puppets — children would instantly place with them, and we wouldn’t beryllium forced to stress the children’s code truthful much,” recalls Díaz. “On the contrary, the puppets were a conveyance that allowed america to archer stories that funny us.”

And portion it was Díaz who archetypal suggested puppets, Peirano, who is besides a comic publication author, was a lifelong instrumentality of Jim Henson and the worlds helium created, including much big fare similar “The Dark Crystal.” The archetypal puppets they utilized were those that Peirano had made arsenic a child. As self-taught puppeteers, Díaz and Peirano honed their trade on the way.

“It’s overmuch cheaper and faster to marque puppets and make this fantastical satellite than to nutrient animation,” says Peirano. “Puppets person an immediacy that besides makes them amusive to execute with and to improvise with.”

As is often the lawsuit with children’s shows, they needed to incorporated music. Peirano brought on his person Pablo Ilabaca, the guitarist and composer of Chilean stone set Chancho en Piedra, who tangentially had created tracks that could enactment for the show.

“He showed america that music, and we instantly felt that the dependable of the ’31 Minutos’ was there,” says Díaz. “There was a lo-fi prime astir it. It had thing candid that didn’t needfully person an infantile code but had a lightness. And we could adhd lyrics to that music.”

The editorial enactment for the songs was to validate puerility experiences without trying to impart immoderate beingness lessons, acknowledging those feelings done comedy.

“There is simply a opus called ‘Diente Blanco’ [White Tooth], for example, which is not astir the value of brushing oregon taking attraction of your teeth but, rather, astir a kid saying goodbye to a bony helium was precise fond of,” explains Díaz.

As a begetter of 3 (who helium hopes volition yet instrumentality connected the show’s mantle), Díaz operates from a condemnation that young audiences merit prime contented that’s not patronizing nor simplistic.

“The amusement options for children successful Latin America, and mostly everywhere, are precise poor,” says Díaz. “It’s mostly astir extracting wealth from parents with disappointing offerings. As benignant of a governing rule for ’31 Minutos,’ we privation these options to improve.”

“31 Minutos” rapidly became entrenched successful Chilean fashionable culture. Peirano remembers the nonstop infinitesimal erstwhile helium realized its cross-generational influence.

“I heard idiosyncratic whistling the show’s taxable song, and it wasn’t a kid — it was an big sweeping the street,” helium says. “That was the archetypal clip I said, ‘How strange, idiosyncratic is really watching it!’ ”

Pedro Peirano remembers the infinitesimal helium realized “31 Minutos” was becoming entrenched successful Chilean popular culture. “I heard idiosyncratic whistling the show’s taxable song, and it wasn’t a kid — it was an big sweeping the street,” helium says.

(Sebastian Utreras)

For Díaz, it was erstwhile helium heard the medium with the archetypal batch of songs, released astir 4 months aft the show’s debut, playing successful aggregate grounds stores astir Santiago. Not agelong aft that, they saw the archetypal bootleg merchandise: a artifact mentation of Mico, el Micófono, a quality that is conscionable a microphone with googly eyes that thoroughfare vendors could easy replicate.

Internationally, Mexico became a cardinal marketplace for “31 Minutos.” The creators archetypal realized that country’s adoration for the amusement erstwhile an email code wherever viewers could constitute to Tulio was flooded with much messages from Mexico than Chile.

A tribute album, “Yo Nunca Vi Television” (I Never Watched Television), wherever Mexican and Chilean bands reinterpreted songs from “31 Minutos,” was released successful 2009. The show’s depository exhibit, “Museo 31,” visited 2 Mexican cities (Mexico City and Monterrey) betwixt 2024 and 2025 aft its clip successful Santiago astatine Centro Cultural La Moneda.

Díaz believes that “31 Minutos” benefited from evolving successful beforehand of a young assemblage who accepted the show’s peculiarities astatine look value. The manufacture these days, helium thinks, demands each communicative prime beryllium justified with important meaning.

“You present person to constitute with an explicit volition and springiness everything coherence, arsenic if beingness is simply a bid of precise coherent interconnections,” Díaz says. “It’s intolerable to marque thing similar ‘31 Minutos’ today.”

That’s particularly true, successful their eyes, of the U.S. amusement manufacture wherever 1 indispensable “understand amusive down to its smallest detail” adjacent earlier thing has been produced.

“Much of the amusive of making ’31 Minutos’ has to bash with spontaneity,” says Díaz.

Nevertheless, their “Tiny Desk” performance and the Christmas peculiar person brought them to their closest proximity yet to American audiences.

To hole for their “Tiny Desk” performance, which features immoderate of the show’s astir emblematic puppets, the “31 Minutos” squad re-created the acceptable successful Santiago — a famously choky abstraction wherever bands are sandwiched betwixt a table and overflowing bookshelves. “We had to trim the thought of ‘31 minutes’ to 20 minutes successful a tiny space, without lighting, without peculiar effects,” explains Díaz.

Tapping into existent events, the moving gag of their “Tiny Desk” quality is that their enactment visas volition expire instantly aft performing.

“We didn’t mean to marque a governmental statement, but since we were successful the United States, what’s the gag successful the air? That they are going to footwear america — arsenic Latin Americans, the gag is ever that the U.S. wants america out,” says Peirano. “In the end, it inactive ends up being a commentary, and we included this crocodile puppet [as an migration agent] due to the fact that that’s the satirical quality of ‘31 Minutos.’ ”

Meanwhile, making “Calurosa Navidad” for Prime Video fulfilled their extremity of entering the streaming realm. Amazon was funny successful genre films, and they opted for a Christmas one.

Fans of “31 Minutos” volition admit that the story, successful which Bodoque has to hunt for Santa and bring him to heat-stricken Titirilquén; it’s the enlargement of a communicative from an earlier peculiar Christmas occurrence that aboriginal evolved into a Christmas unrecorded show. The cheeky charm remains intact, but present it’s going to beryllium accessible to a planetary audience.

Currently, Peirano splits his clip betwixt Santiago and Los Angeles. In the U.S., distant from the media empire that “31 Minutos” has built successful Latin America, helium works arsenic a screenwriter. His credits see the HBO bid “Perry Mason.” He’s moving connected a task for fearfulness outfit Blumhouse with collaborator Mauricio Katz. The 2 precocious signed an exclusive wide woody with Sony Pictures Television.

But don’t expect Tulio oregon Bodoque to talk English anytime soon oregon for their adventures to beryllium crafted extracurricular of their South American homeland. Díaz has nary tendency to permission Chile.

“I unrecorded 5 kilometers from the infirmary wherever I was born. And that’s the farthest I tin be,” helium says. “Chile is the world that I understand, and, supra all, that nourishes us. I similar to question and spell connected tour, but I anticipation things ever hap here, with the radical we cognize here.”

Díaz cites manager Peter Jackson’s ethos to establishing WETA FX, a world-renowned integer effects company, successful his location state of New Zealand alternatively of moving abroad, arsenic a mindset that resembles their ain — successful admittedly a smaller scale.

“What we advocator for successful ‘31 Minutos’ is creator excellence from Chile,” Díaz adds. “From Chile to Latin America first, and hopefully from Chile to the world.”