Series / Alatriste

It was not the most honest adaptation, nor the most pious.

Alatriste (marketed as The Adventures of Captain Alatriste) is a Spanish TV series, based on the homonymous book series by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. It takes the books's character and events and shows them in a more classical swashbuckle light, narrating as always the exploits of Spanish soldier-turned-mercenary Diego Alatriste y Tenorio, here played by Aitor Luna.

This long anticipated series was produced by Mediaset España and shot in Budapest along with German producer Beta Film. It aired in Telecinco from January to April 2015. Despite its significant share (and the blessings from Pérez-Reverte himself, surprisingly enough), the series's infamously Troubled Production and overwhelmingly negative reaction from critics and fans impeded any future endeavour for the franchise, to the point the very producers disowned the series before it hit TV. Reasons for the bad reviews ranged from shooting to acting, including also a freakton of changes and deviations from the books that made it almost an adaptation In Name Only.

This series provides examples of:

• Adaptational Badass:
  • While Alatriste was already a badass in the books, this version of him is downright at the level of Neo. He's just so good that he can face swordfighters while barehanded, indulge in artistic twirling, and even throw some spin kicks here and there.
  • María de Castro dressing as a man and fighting with a sword doesn't happen in the books.
  • In the books, Copons is a very short and petite guy, while his TV series homologue is huge and fat and towers effectively over most characters, being The Big Guy with all clarity.
• Adaptational Dumbass: Luis de Alquézar gets hit hard, as in this series, Angélica is shown to be the (only) brain of the family. Her book version was implied to assist occasionally her uncle's schemes, but he was a mastermind in his own right without any input from her part.
• Adaptational Jerkass: This version of Angélica engages explicitly in animal cruelty, which is never shown or even implied in the books.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • In the books, Quevedo is one of the best swordfighters around, to the point people are afraid of dueling him even whenever he's drunk. In the series, while he retains some flashy brawling skills, he usually loses every time he goes against a serious opponent, and is visibly much less influential and confident in the Court. He notably gets defeated in mere seconds by Malatesta, which never happens in the books and seems farfetched for what we read about their level of ability (Alatriste himself, who is Malatesta's superior, fully respects Quevedo as a fighter - even if Malatesta could best a drunk Quevedo, it would absolutely not be in a couple moves as it happens in TV).
  • The Alquézar family. In the book series, both of their shown members were criminal masterminds, Luis being a full-fledged rival to the Count-Duke of Olivares and Angélica a Fille Fatale who rolled people around her little finger. In the TV series, both of them are degraded to comic relief, the former to an incompetent villain and Henpecked Husband (who is even implied to be a puppet of his wife and niece all the time) and the latter to a parody of herself that gets outsmarted even by Íñigo of all people. The only Alquézar who is not portrayed as incompetent is Teresa, who ironically doesn't even appear on-page in the books.
• Adaptation Expansion: In the series, Angélica receives much more characterization than in any of the books, though only in exchange for turning her from a smart Fille Fatale to a saturday morning cartoon villain who gets tooled even by Íñigo himself.
• Adaptation Personality Change:
  • Alatriste is a heart-breaker and a tricky Lovable Rogue, instead of the bitter, quiet mercenary from the books.
  • The quiet and kind Sebastián Copons is turned into a grumpy, somewhat unpleasant snarker.
  • Angélica also gets hit hard with this. In the books, she is very quiet and sultry, and usually acts in a subtle mocking way when interacting with narrator Íñigo. Her TV series version, on the other hand, is much more extroverted, arrogant and classically evil, and it's shown to be an overt Spoiled Brat, something which was only half-implied on the books with her informed Sweet Tooth trait.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • The Íñigo from this series has almost zero loyalty to Alatriste, diverging from the characteristic Undying Loyalty of his book counterpart, and his only reason to stay with him is to use him to get a military career. Alatriste himself only sees Íñigo as an annoyance he cannot get rid of, while in the books he sees him as a surrogate son.
  • Íñigo here doesn't fall in love with Angélica, receiving instead a much more wholesome love interest in the Canon Foreigner Dorotea. Conversely, it seems this version of Angélica is the one who is interested in him from the start, while in the books this doesn't show until rather late into the saga.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Sebastián Copons is a very secondary character in the books (if a rather memorable one), while in the series he is upgraded to official Big Guy of the main cast.
  • Teresa de Alquézar, Luis's wife and Angélica’s aunt, is briefly mentioned in the books, but here she is a full fledged character.
• Canon Foreigner: Asunta, Dorotea and other characters were created for the series.
• Composite Character: This series's version of Juan Vicuña has elements of the graduate Calzas, another friend to Alatriste who gets Adapted Out.
• Denser and Wackier:
  • Along with the colourful sets, attires and personalities, the series makes the setting look vaguely like a big party, removing the original's seriousness and gloominess and instead adding a lot of humor and comedic enredo. Many of the books' most dramatic plot points and relationships between characters are here fully played up for laughs.
  • The books emphasize the Combat Pragmatist philosophy, often showing Alatriste's derisive thoughts on show-off opponents and foes who do too much Weapon Twirling and Rule of Cool. In the series, he does exactly that, as the duels are often overtly spectacular or bizarrely choreographied (with instances like Quevedo chokeslamming a mook, Alatriste doing spinning back kicks and beating swordmen while barehanded, and characters doing the occasional Zorro sword trick).
• Fat Bastard: Asunta, Angélica's fat, devious chambermaid.
• Fille Fatale: Angélica promises Íñigo a reward for helping her, only that she denies it will be money, and it's instead implied, judging from her non-verbal language and her personality in the books, that this is suggestion of sexual favors. This is a particularly daring instance of this, however, as she is 14 years old and he looks even younger.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Alatriste's anachronistic leather jacket, which also cramps Red Is Heroic.
• Lighter and Softer: The series has a ton of comedic relief and lacks the blood and cynism of the books.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Quevedo busts out a good ol' chokeslam to throw a mook from a staircase.
• Voodoo Shark: The thick native accent of Ukrainian actress Natasha Yarovenko, cast as Madrid's top theatre actress María de Castro, was handwaved as this version of Castro being from Flanders. And that was it. There was never an explanation to why a Flemish woman was named María de Castro, how she became a successful leading theatre actress in Madrid despite having a thick foreign accent, or why that accent was Ukrainian instead of Flemish.