The series consisted of two dramas carefully selected by Calasso, based on Ernest Hemingway's The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber and Other Stories (originally published in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, 1938): The Undefeated and The Killers. The first was set in the Spain of bullfighters, while the second was set in the underworld of the American provinces. The sets were completely recreated in the studios of the Rai Production Center in Naples.
This episode merges the title story with The Capital of the World to explore Hemingway's theme of being "destroyed but not defeated." The plot follows two parallel fates in the Spanish bullfighting world: Manuel García (Duilio Del Prete), an aging, scarred matador who refuses to retire and accepts a humiliating, low-paying night fight, and Paco (Giorgio Locuratolo), a young Madrid waiter whose dreams of becoming a bullfighter end in a tragic training accident.
Filmed in a stark, minimalist style, this episode adapts Hemingway's famous narrative about a boxer who refused to throw a rigged fight. The entire plot unfolds during an autumn afternoon in an American provincial diner, where two hitmen, Al and Max (Ernesto Colli and Vittorio Mezzogiorno), hold the staff hostage while waiting to execute their target. When the boxer fails to show up, a young man named Nick (Roberto Chevalier) rushes to warn him, only to find the athlete completely resigned to his inevitable fate.
