Telecinco has pulled its crime drama 'Romi', starring María Cerezuela, from its Sunday night slot and moved it into Monday prime time, starting August 3, after the show's opening episodes struggled to find an audience on the Mediaset-owned channel.
'Romi' premiered on July 26 with what Telecinco considered disappointing figures. Its first episode reached a share of just 5.5%, and the second improved only slightly to 5.8%. Faced with those numbers, the network decided to shift the day it broadcasts the series.
As a result, the slot 'Romi' would normally have occupied on Sunday, August 2, went instead to a new instalment of the dating show 'First Dates Summer', which drew a stronger 8.6% share, and to a repeat of the travel programme 'Universo Calleja'. New episodes of 'Romi' will now air on Mondays from 11pm, beginning this August 3.
A bumpy road onto Spanish television
The Sunday ratings stumble was not the only setback the production has faced in recent months. 'Romi' had originally been due to premiere on May 28, but Mediaset withdrew it from the schedule at the last minute and shelved it for a month without offering an official explanation.
The sudden postponement was widely read as an attempt to dodge a head-on clash with the 2026 FIFA World Cup, then being broadcast on Spanish public broadcaster La 1. In the same evening slot, RTVE's coverage of the South Africa v Canada match drew a commanding 24.9% share and 2.6 million viewers, a figure that would have overshadowed the series' launch had 'Romi' gone ahead as planned.
Mediaset first announced 'Romi' six years ago, though filming did not begin until 2023. The series went on to screen at the South International Series Festival, an annual showcase for international television drama held in Cádiz, before premiering on Amazon's Prime Video streaming service last autumn. It has taken almost another year for the show to reach Telecinco's schedule, where it has yet to settle into a stable slot.
What 'Romi' is about
'Romi' is made up of eight episodes, each running 70 minutes. In every instalment, the title character draws on her extraordinary abilities to help solve a case, while the show's central mystery gradually unfolds: the dark family secret behind the "accident" that killed her father and left her deaf.
Romi's sharp instincts and her talent for connecting clues make her an exceptional detective, but her impulsive nature and her tendency to break the rules repeatedly put her at odds with her mother, Alaia, the chief of police in Bilbao.
Veteran actress Natalia Millán plays Alaia, in what is one of the most recent series she has led to date. The cast is rounded out by Unax Ugalde, Elena Irureta and Asier Etxeandia.
