GMA 7 welcomes the new year with ‘Mga Batang Riles’

Fresh from its remarkable triumphs at the awards night of the still running 2024 Metro Manila Film Festival, the Kapuso network is all set to launch on 6 January 2025 a series which seems to be as inspirational as its much awarded movie Green Bones. 

Mga Batang Riles, the upcoming series, follows the underprivileged people of Sitio Liwanag who will do what it takes to keep their homes and fight for their rights against the rich Victor family who owns a realty company and wants to acquire the land to create a modern complex on it. 

The series is so titled because among Sitio Liwanag’s prominent residents is a group of young men whose families live around the railroad tracks. The young men have been framed for a crime they did not commit so they will give up their passionate stance of preventing the Victor family from taking over their lands. 

The greedy wealthy family has been sending paid troublemakers to Sitio Liwanag and the young men use their brawn and brains to fight and outwit the thugs. The series is, thus, presented partly as an action genre offering of GMA 7 this 2025. But the series also involves a quest for justice, almost like the big issue in Green Bones.

The network has cast in the series in major roles the comeback-ing Ronnie Rickets and Jeric Raval, as well as Jay Manalo who has always had a flair action scened despite his good standing as a sexy drama actor. 

The young men branded as “mga batang riles” are portrayed by Miguel Tanfelix (as Kidlat), Kokoy de Santos (Kulot), Raheel Bhyria (Sig) and Antonio Vinson (Dagul). Two young pretty women are also prominent residents of Sitio Liwanag, namely, Mutya (Zephany) and Missy (Krissha Viaje). Mutya wants to be a singer while Missy dreams of becoming an actress. 

The Victor family has a son, Matos (played by Bruce Roeland), whose  age is almost the same as those of railroad boys and Matos is involved in terrorizing the sitio residents, so he and his cohorts get to engage in physical battles the young men of the railroad tracks. 

The network’s production department is bent on creating a realistic series by having characters who are quirky such as the overbearing wealthy matriarch Scarlett (Desiree del Valle, who is tentatively crossing over from ABS-CBN), the extremely friendly man played by Roderick Paulate who teased at the media conference for the series that his role later may or may not turn out to be gay. Paulate’s enduring reputation as a comedian is anchored on gay roles, including those that team him up with Diamond Star Maricel Soriano. 

The series actually features three popular gay social media personalities in real life portraying an assortment of gays residing in Sitio Liwanag. Those characters spread rumors and humor in the series. 

To ensure that the young Sparkle stars of GMA 7 cast in the series will be good both in their fight routines and dramatic scenes, they were treated to weeks of separate workshops for executing impressive cinematic fights and rumbles and for pulling off convincingly their pure dramatic scenes. 

Ricketts handled the action routines while actor-director Laurice Guillen took care of the stretches of dramatic portrayals. Del Valle, Viaje, and Zephanie are mixed with the young men in the drama workshops, thus giving them time to bond with each other. 

Viaje needs to bond with them as she is actually with Viva One streaming platform of the conglomerate Viva Communications, Inc. She was well-followed in the series Safe Skies, Archer which she top-billed with the glamorous actor Jerome Ponce with whom she is identified with as a love team. 

At the mediacon, the dusky and lovely Viaje revealed that she was first shocked and then thrilled when her Viva managers told her that GMA 7 wanted her for a series, just her, and not with Ponce. 

But Viaje remains to be a Viva star and she also revealed at the media event that she and Ponce have been signed up for a series for another network that will air middle of 2025. Viaje is really going places in 2025. She’s living up to her Hispanic surname, which means “travel” in English. 

Richard Arellano mainly directs Mga Batang Riles, with Guillen as co-director for all dramatic scenes. Arellano was a character actor for  many years and has since been working off-camera as co-director or as assistant director on a string of TV series. 

Oh, yes, there’s another comebacking star via Mga Batang Riles: the seasoned Diana  Zubiri, who portrays mother of one the young men. 

Featuring a bunch of young macho stars is kinda new for GMA 7. “Bunch stardom” in TV series and streaming platforms is closely associated with ABS-CBN. Anthony Jennings, Kyle Echarri, Seth Fedelin, Andrea Brillantes and Francine Diaz are products of “bunch stardom.”