I just saw the first episode of Cable Girls. It is a Spanish Netflix series. TBH I started watching it because I came across an article on social media which mentioned the new series or seasons which had come to Netflix this July, and belonged to the period dramas genre - it's the one genre my mom and I manage to watch together, other than your easy watch rom-coms or just romance variety.
So I read a brief synopsis of the series (at that time I did not Google it, so didn't even know it was Spanish), and we just started watching episode 1. Which is when we realized that it was Spanish dubbed in English. But that did not really seem to matter, because for a first episode, it really managed to keep both mom and me hooked to it (normally we kind of have to watch a couple of episodes to get hooked to a series).
Now what held my attention?
For a series which was set in the late 1920s, the theme seemed sadly familiar. It spoke about women in Spain in that time, who were looking to find independence in their lives, through their work. Yet it also spoke about how limited career opportunities were for women back then, and their happiness just from the fact that this was something which was theirs to now look forward to. It also spoke about women being expected to stay at home or give up work for family life, or give up work when the family finances did not require them to work, even if this was their space which they cherished. It also spoke about families that did not think it right for their daughters to work in the first place.
And my first thought was, that even a century later, things were pretty much the same for a lot of women, at least in India. A lot of women work only to support family finances, a lot of families expect their women to "behave" in a certain manner, child care is a woman's primary responsibility. The minority of women who "have it all" are expected to feel privileged to have supportive families.
But, even in the first episode, it also showed women trying to fight for what they want, their internal struggles, and a view of what was to come, and as suggested by the title - their support system with each other. And that resonates in parts, and in light of the current #challengeaccepted movement, is also the need of the hour.
I still have to see how the series pans out, but its first episode certainly was food for thought.
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