A group of friends gather to play cards in their host’s cosy home when the power cuts. Mobile phones die. An eerie snow falls all over the city, killing everyone it touches. The friends struggle to survive, their panic replaced by a growing awareness that humanity itself is at stake.

This is the premise of The Eternaut, a chilling dystopian drama out of Argentina that is streaming on Netflix.

With its mix of sci-fi elements and focus on human resilience, the six-episode, Spanish-language series has struck a universal nerve, rocketing to No 1 among Netflix’s most-streamed non-English-language TV shows within days.

Netflix has already renewed the show for a second season, with filming scheduled to start in 2026.

But The Eternaut has touched on something deeper in Argentina, where legendary comic-strip writer Hector German Oesterheld penned the original graphic novel in 1957 – two decades before he was “disappeared” by Argentina’s military dictatorship, along with all four of his daughters.

Abroad, publishers are scrambling to keep pace with renewed interest in the source material. US-based Fantagraphics said it would reissue an out-of-print English translation because of the surge in US demand.