Between Father and Son

Netflix told the cast this format was a bet.

Pamela Almanza said the platform warned her from day one that nobody knew what would happen with Between Father and Son. The English title is the translation of Entre padre e hijo. Netflix had not tried a Mexican microseries like this. Twenty chapters of about ten minutes. All of them dumped on 13 May 2026. She called the shoot a blast. People have less time, she said, but the same hunger for a full story. latestnetflix.com's take is that Sit down, finish it, no year-long wait for the next season.

That is the column, not another hacienda recap. Netflix and TIS Productions built a short-form soap in horizontal frames and asked whether TikTok-length episodes could still look like cinema.

The numbers arrived before the critics did.

Angela Suarez, TIS VP of development and production, told PRODU the show sat at number three globally in Netflix's non-English TV Top 10 during premiere week. Number one in 12 countries. Inside the Top 10 in 60. Five million views. Carolina Leconte, Netflix VP of content for Mexico, said the company wanted members to choose how and when they watch, and that short horizontal episodes were the test. Suarez called Chilean writer Pablo Illanes "the king of surprise." A telenovela beat that used to take three chapters now resolves in one scene, she said. They shot the estate in three or four weeks, one hacienda doing the work of many sets. Fernando Urdapilleta directed. Paula Parra co-wrote.

The stepson plot, and the last name on morning TV.

Almanza plays Barbara, a lawyer who visits her fiance's family estate and falls for his son. Erick Elias is Alvaro, a pilot whose first wife is missing. Graco Sendel is Iker. Common Sense Media dated the premiere 13 May 2026, rated it TV-MA, and flagged guns, infidelity, and sex with no nudity. Melissa Camacho called the 7-to-10-minute chapters disjointed and still interesting enough. IMDb sits around 4.3 from hundreds of votes. Netflix Latinoamerica posted the official trailer on 28 April. El Espectador placed the shoot in Mexico, with some locations in El Ajusco and Tepeji del Rio in winter.

Sendel is the son of telenovela villain Sergio Sendel. After the drop, Mexican press asked the father about Graco's nude scenes. On Sale el Sol, Sergio said the career calls belong to his son, and that if the part needed those shots, Graco had to do them. Treat that as a parent on morning TV, not a filing. The same forbidden-stepson pitch still put the series on the U.S. and Latin America Top 10.

Almanza told El Universal the women in these soaps now act like they never cry. She wanted Barbara to have vulnerability. Ten minutes a chapter, and the algorithm liked it more than the critics did.