General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Nada

Nada (English title: Nothing) is an Argentine comedy-drama television miniseries created and directed by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, starring Luis Brandoni as a curmudgeonly Buenos Aires food critic whose life falls apart when the housekeeper who ran his existence for four decades dies. Robert De Niro appears as a special guest artist and narrates the whole series, in his first major recurring television role, having previously starred in television productions including The Wizard of Lies (2017).¹^•²^•¹⁸ It premiered on October 11, 2023 on Star+ in Latin America and on Disney+ in selected markets outside the region.³

Key fact	Detail
Format	One season, five episodes of roughly 30 minutes each; total runtime 159 minutes⁴
Creators	Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, who also directed and co-wrote with Emanuel Diez¹
Lead cast	Luis Brandoni (Manuel Tamayo Prats), Robert De Niro (Vincent Parisi), Majo Cabrera (Antonia), María Rosa Fugazot (Celsa)¹
Premiere	October 11, 2023, on Star+ in Latin America and Disney+ in select markets; world premiere at the San Sebastián Festival's Culinary Zinema section on September 25, 2023³
Reception	IMDb 7.8/10 from about 6,700 votes; Rotten Tomatoes 83% Tomatometer and 96% Popcornmeter⁵^•⁶
Awards	4 wins and 5 nominations, including a New York Festivals Gold Medal for Best Comedy and PRODU Awards for Best Comedy Miniseries, Best Lead Actor (Brandoni), and Best Director (Cohn and Duprat)⁷
Current streaming	Available on Disney+ after the discontinuation of Star+⁸

Spoilers

Premise

Manuel Tamayo Prats (Luis Brandoni) is a sophisticated, provocative and haughty gastronomic critic of Buenos Aires, an art lover who has lived for decades with a woman, Celsa (María Rosa Fugazot), who resolves everything for him as a personal assistant, housekeeper and cook. When Celsa dies unexpectedly, Manuel is lost: he realizes he cannot do anything without help, having never even owned a cell phone. He hires Antonia (Majo Cabrera), an inexperienced young woman born and raised in a small town in Paraguay, and tries to instruct her in every aspect of his life, from his personal tastes to strictly culinary matters. The clash of cultures and generations produces unusual, contradictory and tender situations with lessons for both.¹^•⁴

Into this process comes Vincent Parisi (Robert De Niro), a famous New York writer, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and author of 18 books, who is Manuel's old friend. He narrates the series from a distance and eventually travels to Buenos Aires to present his friend's new book, sharing meals, readings, long walks and existential conversations against the backdrop of the city.¹^•⁴

Structure and style

Each of the five episodes is titled after a Buenos Aires slang phrase, which De Niro reads as a dictionary definition in deliberately strained Spanish: "Estar al horno" (In the oven), "Remar en dulce de leche" (To row in dulce de leche), "La verdad de la milanesa" (The truth of the milanesa), "Comerse un garrón" (To eat a garrón), and "Tirar manteca al techo" (To throw butter at the ceiling). De Niro also explains distinctions of Argentine slang, such as the difference between "boludo" and "pelotudo".⁹^•¹⁰

Food is the transversal axis of the story. The series showcases porteño cooking in detail: milanesas with mashed potatoes, pancakes with dulce de leche, noodles with tuco and pesto, griddled asados, and the lomo "Clark's" en camisa once made by the chef Gato Dumas. The creators said they wanted to portray a Buenos Aires cuisine that, though built on immigrant, colonial and pre-Hispanic influences, has an identity of its own.¹¹ The chef Narda Lepes, the chef Francis Mallmann, and the gastronomy journalist Federico Oldenburg served as culinary advisors.³

The series was shot on location in emblematic places of Buenos Aires, including La Boca, the Obelisk, Plaza San Martín, and Arroyo street.³^•¹²

Casting Robert De Niro

The role of Vincent was written exclusively for De Niro, a real-life friend of Brandoni's, and the creators considered his participation very difficult but not impossible.¹³ According to Gastón Duprat, agents would have discarded a proposal for the actor to travel to Argentina for a non-starring role, so Brandoni wrote him a letter by hand, stamped it, and mailed it to his home. De Niro opened it, asked for the scripts, and agreed in a Zoom meeting; Duprat recalled that "it was that letter that unleashed it" and that Brandoni wrote it in front of them.¹⁴ Money was the other obstacle: De Niro agreed to reduce his usual fee, which the directors said he often quadruples, to three million dollars, still too much for an Argentine series but reasonable for a Disney-backed production.¹⁴

De Niro arrived in Argentina on April 30, 2022, and filmed for ten intense days, about 12 hours a day, appearing on camera alone in the earlier episodes giving definitions of porteño slang and acting alongside Brandoni at the end of the fourth episode and in the fifth.¹¹^•¹³ The full five-episode shoot took two and a half months, with a method the directors described as closer to cinema than to series television.¹³ Robert De Niro had acted in television productions prior to 2023, including The Wizard of Lies (2017), before Nada was his first major recurring television role.²^•¹⁴^•¹⁸

Release and reception

The series opened the Culinary Zinema section of the 71st San Sebastián International Film Festival on September 25, 2023, the first Latin American fiction series to take part in that section, competing for its Best Film award against four feature films.³^•⁷

Critics received it well. LA NACION called it the directors' most mature work with an exceptional Brandoni and rated it very good;¹⁵ the critic Diego Batlle of Otros Cines found a more humanist and redemptive turn than usual in Cohn and Duprat's work.⁴ On IMDb the series holds a 7.8/10 rating from about 6,700 users, with episode ratings rising from 7.8 for the first episode to 8.4 for the last.⁵ Rotten Tomatoes reports an 83% Tomatometer from 6 reviews and a 96% Popcornmeter score from more than 50 ratings.⁶ Common Sense Media rated it 15+ for frequent cursing in Spanish and English, strong innuendo, a character death, and a brief scene of domestic violence, while highlighting its themes of friendship, love, and adapting to change.¹⁶

At the 2024 awards cycle the series won four of its nominations: a New York Festivals Gold Medal for Best Comedy (credited to Cohn, Duprat, and writer Emanuel Diez), the PRODU Award for Best Comedy Miniseries, the PRODU Award for Best Lead Actor in a Comedy-Drama Series for Brandoni, and the PRODU Award for Best Direction for Cohn and Duprat. Majo Cabrera was nominated for Best New Actress and, at the Argentinean Film Critics Association Awards, for the Silver Condor for Best New Actress in a Series.⁷

Distribution and aftermath

Star+, the Disney service that premiered the series in Latin America, was later discontinued, and Nada moved to Disney+, where it remains available; in the United States it was carried on Hulu.⁸^•¹⁶ Talks for a second season were reported in 2024,¹⁷ and Cohn and Duprat subsequently filmed a continuation titled Todo, made without De Niro as a closing chapter for Brandoni's character.¹⁴ Luis Brandoni, who died on April 20, 2026 at the age of 86, counted Nada among his last productions.⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › Telenovelas and Latin American/Iberian serials › Argentine telenovelas and serial dramas

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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