The week of soccer drama that began with Sunday’s FIFA World Cup final stretches past the series premiere of El Rey Network’s futbol-themed Matador on Tuesday, July 15 into Wednesday’s debut of NUVOtv’s docuseries Los Jets.
Of the two new series, Los Jets is the most overtly political, and perhaps the most likely to inspire young men to work hard in school and participate in team sports.
Based on a 2006 book by Paul Cuadros, Los Jets, directed by Mark Landsman, is about a Siler City, N.C., highschool soccer team made up mostly of undocumented Latino immigrants. It explores the anti-immigrant bias that forced Cuadros to spend years even getting the school to create the team, the importance “Los Jets” has for the boys on the team and Latinos overall in that area of North Carolina, and the challenges each player faces in pursuit of the American dream.
For the ones hoping to go to college, the team’s success on the field might be a key factor in obtaining a scholarship or financial aid.
A New York screening on July 10 delivered extra star power to Los Jets in the form of NUVOtv chief creative officer Jennifer Lopez, who produced the series with her sister, Lynda Lopez. It’s the first in a franchise of “Nu America” shows combining storytelling with social commentary, as the network puts it.
“It is about the American dream, it is about social, political issues, but also just wanting to belong. At so many levels, whether you’re a teenager, a child or if you’re a grownup, you can relate to this story in some way,” Lopez said during a solo red-carpet stroll into a New York Hilton ballroom for the screening. (Wearing a Zuhair Murad dress, she disclosed.)
Cuadros told The Wire he thinks the show will appeal to “Latinnials,” meaning Hispanic-Americans of high-school age and beyond. “They’re going to fall in love with it, because it’s going to be about them.”
The former investigative reporterturned- soccer coach also said World Cup popularity won’t be what makes this a soccer-loving country. “America’s going to make America a soccerloving country, and this generation is, too.”
Los Jets premieres July 16 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on NUVOtv.
(This story was updated on July 14 and corrected the premiere time.)
Was D.C. Ice-Pop Truck A Frozen Investment?
The Small Business Entrepreneurship Council has found a way to make the issue of the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband regulatory authority — and whether Title II should be used to buttress it — directly relevant to a public usually more interested in where they are going to get their next ice pop on a hot summer day: Tie it to where they are going to get their next ice pop on a hot summer day.
The council parked a “Pleasant Pops” wagon (a small business, of course) near the Capitol South subway stop (closest to the House side of the Hill) to pitch its point that reclassifying broadband under Title II common carrier regs would “freeze” broadband investment.
OK, maybe the ice-pop connection is a stretch, but not if you are getting a frozen treat in that outstretched hand.
Council president Karen Kerrigan said the cart went through almost 300 pops in a couple of hours last week, with treats going to both members of the public and staffers on lunch break, along with handouts detailing why Title II is no sweet treat for the economy and “not a good thing from the small-business perspective.” Kerrigan said the pops drew takers from various committees and both sides of the aisle — staffers rather than legislators — as well as a hungry general public.
The council was planning to file its nonice- pop-related net-neutrality comments with the FCC late last week.
— John Eggerton
