Fantasmas
★★★★
Binge

If you’re familiar with the work of Salvadoran-American comedian and actor Julio Torres, best known as a writer for Saturday Night Live and co-creator of the Spanish language fantasy-comedy Los Espookys, you’ll know not to expect standard sitcom fare with his new series.

And those not familiar are in for a treat, as Fantasmas, created, written by, directed and starring Torres, is an incredible showcase of his talent - and his delightfully twisted mind.

Torres plays Julio, a version of himself in a dreamy, heightened version of New York City, living with his personal assistant robot Bibo (voiced by Joe Rumrill). Struck by lightning as a child (while going to the toilet in the woods), Julio was gifted with the ability to “see things in a different way”. He can sense the inner lives of objects and concepts and picks up jobs using his “free-association synesthesia”.

The first episode opens with him pitching a new crayon to Crayola - a clear-coloured one, to “represent the intangible emotional space between us”, he explains to the perplexed executives. The name of that crayon, he suggests, should be “fantasmas”. (That’s the only explanation of the show’s title we’re ever going to get, given that Fantasmas is so surreal as to lie almost beyond description.)

Julio has other talents - he’s currently consulting with NASA on rebranding a constellation, and has several ideas for a new streaming service run by the shoe company Zappos - but he lacks his “Proof of Existence” card, something that he needs in order to find a new apartment and access medical care, and to which Julio is opposed.

That storyline is the most grounded thing in this six-part series, in which each episode is really a loose collection of absurd (and very funny) sketches that bleed into each other, and occasionally recur throughout the series, with an overarching storyline (of sorts) that sees Julio trying to track down a lost gold oyster-shaped earring. The reason doesn’t really matter here, it’s the journeys he takes in his search that comprise the bulk of the action as Torres marries the mundanity of life with campy magical absurdism.

A few of these sketches come from television programs Julio catches glimpses of, such as the 80s-style sitcom Melf, (a sexier version of the 80s puppet Alf) or the live court case on Court TV between Santa and one of his disgruntled elves, but often it’s from his interaction with people he encounters around the city, from his friends to call-centre operators, doctors and fellow ride-share passengers.