Chile's cheeky puppets aim wide

Creators of children’s program 31 Minutos’ eye world market yet keep mindset local.

- BY CARLOS AGUILAR

THE NEW Christmas TV special "31 Minutos: Calurosa Navidad" features hand puppets that get into misadventures in the fictional town of Titirilquén, Chile.

Self-centered news anchor Tulio Trivino and his reporter best friend Juan Carlos Bodoque, who has a gambling problem, have amused audiences for 22 years. Neither has aged a day. That's because they are hand puppets a monkey in a suit and a red rabbit in a striped shirt, respectively at the forefront of the beloved Chilean TV show "31 Minutos." First conceived as a children's program for Chile's public television, "31 Minutos" debuted in March 2003 and now spans four seasons.

A parody of a traditional newscast, the irreverent concept features dozens of peculiar puppets who populate the fictional town of Titirilquén. Their sharply absurdist misadventures and reportages are accompanied by pun-heavy, humorous original songs.

"The Muppets and 'Sesame Street' have been great inspirations for us," says cocreator Pedro Peirano, speaking in Spanish from Santiago, Chile, during a recent Zoom interview. "But we mixed that with a more Latin American idiosyncrasy, so it's familiar but very different." Peirano voices and puppeteers Tulio, while Álvaro Díaz, the show's other cocreator, gives life to Bodoque (who started out as a green toad before taking on his rabbit form). Among their fabric-made pals are Patana, Tulio's niece who is a duck; field reporter Mario Hugo, a Chihuahua in a suit; and Juanín, a fuzzy white creature with no visible eyes, the newscast's producer.

"What we set out to do, I don't know if consciously, was to create characters who are not role models of anything," says Peirano.