General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Smiley (2022 TV series)

Smiley is a Spanish romantic comedy television series released on Netflix on 7 December 2022, adapted by playwright Guillem Clua from his own stage play of the same name¹. Set in Barcelona, its eight episodes follow the waiter Álex (Carlos Cuevas) and the architect Bruno (Miki Esparbé), who meet after Álex sends an angry voicemail intended for someone else and it reaches Bruno by mistake²^•¹.

Key fact	Detail
First episode	7 December 2022, all eight episodes released the same day on Netflix¹
Format	One season of 8 episodes, each about 36 minutes³
Origin	Adaptation of Guillem Clua's play Smiley, first staged at the Sala Flyhard in Barcelona in 2012; Clua served as creator, writer, and showrunner of the series¹
Main cast	Carlos Cuevas as Álex, Miki Esparbé as Bruno, with Pepón Nieto; ensemble includes friends Vero, Albert, and Núria²^•⁴
Setting and language	Barcelona; produced in Spain in Spanish with some Catalan²^•⁴
Reception	IMDb 8.0 from about 10,000 votes and a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score³
Age rating	16 in Spain; TV-MA in the United States¹^•⁴

Spoilers

Premise and structure

The story begins when Álex, having been ghosted by a boy he had been building fantasies with, records an angry voicemail demanding an explanation and sends it by mistake to Bruno, a stranger⁵. The two men, presented as opposites in personality with nothing obvious in common beyond falling for each other, meet through this error, and what starts as an ordinary date grows into something more consequential¹.

Barcelona as a backdrop. Netflix's own description frames the series as two men and their friends navigating doubts, insecurities, and missed opportunities while looking for the true love missing from their lives². Episodes are titled around the pair's milestones: the opener, "Cuando Álex encontró a Bruno" (When Álex Met Bruno), establishes the wrong-number meeting; later episodes cover their first date, Christmas gatherings in three separate homes, a New Year's Eve party at the Bar Bero, and the finale "El hilo rojo" (The Red Thread), in which Álex and Bruno seem unable to break the red thread of destiny². Episode runtimes range from 33 to 37 minutes².

Secondary plots. Alongside the central romance, the series develops the story of a lesbian couple, Vero and Patri, together seven years and in crisis, and explores dating apps, polyamory, and coming out; a drag queen named Javi runs the Bar Bero, which acts as a meeting point linking the characters⁶^•².

From stage to screen

The series adapts Clua's play Smiley, a success in Spanish and Catalan theater. Since its 2012 premiere at Barcelona's Sala Flyhard, the play crossed borders and has been performed in the United States, Australia, Germany, and Venezuela¹. For the screen version Clua took the roles of creator, writer, and showrunner¹.

An academic dissertation on the play and its screen life records further international stagings, including Montevideo (2018), Lima (2018), Miami (2019), New York (2019), and Caracas (2019), and notes that Clua changed the New York reading's subtitle from "A Love Story" to "A Barcelona Love Story" to reflect the play's references to gay Barcelona locations⁷.

Production. The series was produced by Minoria Absoluta for Netflix¹. JustWatch credits Marta Pahissa as director; the Presentes agency's review lists Marta Pahissa and David Martín Porras as directors³^•⁶.

Reception and representation

Netflix announced the 7 December release date in mid-November 2022, and the series arrived during a period in which Netflix was Spain's most prolific producer of Spanish originals, with 15 series released in 2022⁸^•⁹. Among those originals, Smiley held a place in Spain's top ten for three weeks⁹.

Audience and critical scores have been high: JustWatch records 8.0 on IMDb from about 10,000 votes and 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 77% JustWatch user rating³.

LGBTQ+ representation. In an interview published the day before release, star Carlos Cuevas described the series as aimed at an older audience segment that also lacks LGBTI referents and positive love stories that are not framed as drama, tragedy, or coming-out narratives¹⁰. The GLAAD "Where We Are on TV" report for 2022–23 named Smiley among the standout LGBTQ Spanish-language series on the largest streamers¹¹.

Academic commentary is less uniformly positive. A 2025 qualitative study in Palabra Clave analyzing the series concluded that, through its two protagonists, it promotes as an ideal of happiness a sex-affective relationship modeled more on the traditional monogamous heteronormative model than on alternatives to the heteronorm, thereby perpetuating the cisheteronormative relationship as the ideal model of success¹². The Presentes review, while welcoming the series for placing non-heteronormative couples as leads free of the drama, trauma, and STI connotations often attached to such characters, noted that hegemonic bodies abound, some stereotypes repeat, and trans people do not appear⁶.

Continuation. Clua has said the story can continue because a stage work, Smiley: Después del amor (Smiley: After Love), remains in the theater; fan commentary describes it as a second play set eight years after the events of the first, and the two plays have been adapted into a two-part novel¹.

References

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