ABSTRACT
It is precisely through casting that The Kid establishes its claim, beyond the genre limitations of popular cinema, to quality. Nevertheless, analysis of the audio-visual sector in Spain, particularly a comparison of popular cinema and quality television, offers a valuable case study for understanding the shift in the cultural status of television relative to an aesthetic revolution that challenges the privilege of cinema and creates new tensions in World Cinema. The high-speed car chase sequence with which the first episode opens would not be envied by The Kid. And the labyrinthine plot, with its expert cliff-hangers and reversals, is based on a script that, rarely in Spain, was preconceived as an artistic whole, one in which every beat is perfectly placed. Yet it is precisely at this point that El Príncipe, an ostentatious example of cinematic TV in its aesthetic, is most televisual.
