Outside Shoreditch : There’s something about the soap operas in Portugal

Written by Sara Baptista de Sousa

In Portugal we have two types of soap operas – the Portuguese ones and the Brazilian ones. For many years, we didn’t produce many soaps, so we went outside the country to get them. We had some soaps created and they were actually a hit, but the Brazilian ones were always considered as the genuine thing and the public opinion is that we were copying the originals and that we were not ready to be like the Brazillians.

But, when the creation of TVI – Independent Television – was created, something happened and soap operas started to captivate people and they were success after success. After this, SIC – another independent channel in the Portuguese television – started also creating novels. Once, TVI has a soap that everyone watched. If was called “Ninguém como Tu” (Nobody like you), and there was a murder – someone has killed António. Well, in the soap ended, the last episode was seen by everyone, and everyone had a theory of who killed António. The most intriguing thing was that in that year, 2005, in this last episode, everyone put on their social networks status that they were watching who had killed the man. That was indeed a success. 199 episodes.

Do we compare ourselves now to the Brazilian soaps? Of course. Are we better? Sometimes we are. In 2010, and by the country surprise after several years of national fiction being made, the soap Meu Amor (My Love) won the International Emmy Award to Best Soap Opera, a product from TVI. Meu Amor had 319 episodes. Laços de Sangue had 322 episodes.

The following year, the winner on the same category was Laços de Sangue (Blood Ties). If that wasn’t enough, this year we were nominated for the same Emmy in two different soaps – from SIC and TVI – Rosa Fogo (Fire Rose) and Remédio Santo (Holy Remedy), and we lost for one Brazilian soap, the remake of O Astro. Rosa Fogo had 225 episodes. Remédio Santo had 368 episodes. O Astro had only 64 episodes. The stories? Well, as usually, soap operas didn’t vary much from each other. Laços de Sangue talked about a story of a family of 5, reduced by a dramatic event to 3, but in continuity of the soap we discover that after all there are 4 family members, but the soaps ends with just 1 of them alive. Love, hate, passion, murder, were all part of the drama. And of course, has any other soap, there are many parallel stories from that one main story. And this was blood ties. And we won.

Meu Amor, or My Love, told the story of three women with troubled romantic relationships, where most of the action take place in Lisboa. Here, they fall in love, marry, get divorced, a plain crashes, someone goes missing, there’s a bad guy, a bad woman, and in the mix of this there are some fashion ideas. Was that good? Apparently. Was the soap a success? Yes, a real big hit. Did we win? We win.

This year the soaps were not that much different so let’s see. Rosa Fogo was full of dance, love and hate. That were the simple three elements that made the soap alive. A soap that says to be “so that people can dream of a better tomorrow”. And Remédio Santo, where “love, romance, humour, fantasy, hatred, jealousies and betrayals, saints and demons mingle in an environment almost mystical and magical, in which each seeks a holy remedy.”

Where do we find the names? Very simple. Rosa Fogo is based on a song by Amor Electro named Rosa Sangue (Blood Rose), and Remédio Santo is something that Portuguese will say when they find a “cure” for something. We frequently use song titles or song lyrics to defined the title of the soaps, so they get catchy and everyone can reminds of them.

In Portugal, everyone is forced to watch a soap opera – between certain time at night, the Portuguese television is full of them, one after another after another. From 8pm to 1am, the soap operas take over the television and in a way or another, you will always watch one. There is no escape possible.