Netflix experiments with alternative formats from time to time. We saw it back then with Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, and now he’s doing it with Kaleidoscopeabout whose series he has just published a filming video and which will debut on the platform on January 1, 2023, and which represents a leap into audiovisual from the “messy” reading designed by Julio Cortázar with his well-remembered Hopscotch, which he later developed in 62/Modelo para armar, undoubtedly the most experimental a novel by a brilliant Argentinian writer.

If you are not familiar with Hopscotch, you should know that it is a novel written by Cortázar in Madrid and that it was published in Latin America in 1963 (its debut in Spain was significantly delayed due to regime censorship). It consists of 155 chapters and its main feature is that the author has proposed no less than four different reading options for it:

• normal readingthat is, sequential from start to finish.
• “traditional” readingthus defined by the author and which suggests a sequential reading from the beginning to chapter 56, in which the reader must leave the work.
• Reading for the pleasure of the readerin which the reading is no longer sequential, but random, as it is the reader who decides which part he wants to read at any given time, which he can do by planning the order in advance or, if he wants, leave it to chance.
• Reading according to the direction boarda guide located at the beginning of the book that suggests reading skips and turns of chapters and adds texts from other authors and disciplines

Apart from the interest of the story told in Hopscotch, much of its significance is due to this jerky approach to the normal reading model.

Well, with Kaleidoscope Netflix seems to want to offer a similar experience, because one of the key points for the promotion of this new series was to confirm that the episodes can be seen in the order in which the user wishes, in accordance with certain guidelines in this regard. Now you might be thinking that there are already many other similar series, namely all in which the plot of each episode is independent, but the big difference is that in Kaleidoscope, all the episodes are part of the same plot.

More interestingly, according to its creators, depending on the order in which we see the episodes will significantly affect our point of view about the story told in the series. So we can start choosing between the names Yellow and Green, then repeat the process with Blue, Purple and Orange and make a final decision with Red and Pink. Once they’re done, it’s time to watch the series finale, which can be found in the episode White: The Heist.

Starring Paz Vega, Giancarlo Esposito, Rufus Sewell and Tati Gabrielle, Kaleidoscope tells the story spanning 25 years of a group of thieves and their plan to pull off the biggest heist in history, breaking into a supposedly impenetrable vault protected like a fortress. , to seize the loot that is kept inside. Each of the episodes will show us a different side of both the story of the robbery and the inner history that surrounds it.