Every once in a while a show comes along that’s so unique, so unapologetic, and so, well, good, that it feels like a miracle it exists at all. With major companies turning against art since the pandemic and with the streaming bubble bursting, these little miracles are becoming more and more infrequent. This makes the arrival of Julio Torres’ Fantasmas feel like a sigh of creative relief.

Torres plays Julio, a person living in a world much like our own. Cost of living is rising, bureaucracy and capitalism make life impossible for most, technological advances are wasted, everything is illogical in the most boring ways possible, and conformity is prioritized over uniqueness. Julio’s desire to create on his own terms and not get a “proof of existence” card make him an anomaly.

This card isn’t the only slight variant to our world. Julio’s assistant is a robot named Bibo who dreams of being an actor and his social media manager is a tiny clay figure with a temper and bad boundaries. Anyone familiar with Torres’ work from his special My Favorite Shapes to his previous show Los Espookys to his recent feature directorial debut Problemista, will find a familiar voice. But here Torres has somehow increased the fidelity to that voice. Fantasmas is very, very entertaining, and yet it accomplishes that without any attempt to fit itself into the boxes of other media.

Throughout the series, Julio’s main narrative in which he loses an earring and wants to get a biopsy of a mark on his neck and doesn’t want to sell out or get a “proof of existence” card is frequently interrupted with vignettes about secondary and tertiary characters. It often feels like a sketch show linked by this main narrative, all existing in the same bizarro universe.

This show is queer. The sketches include Julia Fox as Mrs. Clause (speaking during a trial where the plaintiff is an elf played by Bowen Yang), Dominique Jackson as The Algorithm, Patti Harrison as a goldfish with a job, a Cole Escola appearance I shall not be spoiling, and a Spike Einbinder/Kate Berlant Marvel spoof — as in a spoof of Marvel Studios and the culture around it. There’s also an incredible — and really hot?? — sequence where Alexa Demie and Ziwe have a customer service representative top off.

The way lines from I Think You Should Leave enter the lexicon of guys who take UCB classes and lines from recent SNL enter the lexicon of straight people you went to high school with, things said in Fantasmas are sure to be repeated by queer people everywhere. That these sketches are so memorable and consistently funny while being political and thought-provoking and linked by a consistent narrative makes it all the more impressive.

From cameos to Torres himself, the cast is perfect. I could go scene-by-scene, vignette-by-vignette and praise each performer. (I will shout out Joe Rumrill as the voice of Bibo and Tomas Matos as Chester, a driver for an Uber alternate called Chester.) But performance artist and frequent Torres collaborator Martine Gutierrez is somehow the best part of a show that seems like it should be too good to have a best part. As Julio’s manager Vanesja — or, rather, Julio’s friend who has been doing a performance art piece where she acts like a manager for years — she’s not just funny, she acts as the show’s grounding presence. Her idiosyncratic, stylized characterization sets the tone of the series. Her work establishes the world as much as the wonderfully sparse set design and dream-like photography.

Each of Fantasmas’ six episodes pulled me a bit closer to sanity. By reflecting our maddening world with precision, it makes everything feel more manageable. Torres may not have the answers to creating a more just or logical world, but his work is reassurance that we are, in fact, experiencing the impossibilities those in power want to hide.

Built into the text of the show is an awareness that its own existence is special. Not just because of its politics, but because there’s an extended sequence where Paul Dano fucks a puppet alien. In the end, Fantasmas is a “proof of existence” card for great, queer television. It’s somehow still possible in our mixed up, fucked up world.

Fantasmas is now streaming on Max.

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