Do you (or did you) watch telenovelas?

[Sylph]

Here where?

[Sylph]

I remember another splendid Brazillian actress - Nathália Timberg, who played donna Idalina in Força de um Desejo and Yolanda Mendes in Celebdridade.

[CassieFan]

Yup, she was excellent, especially as the "grandma from hell" in Forca.

[YRBB]

Greece

[Sylph]

Like Vera sto dexi and Erotas? Watched any of those?

[MarkH]

Are these computed the same way as daytime?

Spanish language serials are REALLY pulling in 19.5s and 12.2s? Or is this some percentage of LATIN households?

[Sylph]

Does this tell anything?

[SoapAlcoholic]

my favorites have been Soñadoras" and camilla and "Amigas y rivales

[YRBB]

Oh, I floved VERA STO DEXI (most of the time), it was really very well done, acted, written--and it ended on the right time. EROTAS I never really followed but would watch here and there... never as good as VSD, dialogue-wise, or acting-wise (in some cases) but it was fun. Did you ever get to watch them?

[Sylph]

No, unfortunately. I have friends in Greece who tease me telling me how good these shows were. And to this day I'm surprised to hear that. Because, besides UK and Aussie soaps, I never hear anything good about soap operas in other countries. In that sense, Greek soaps are a pleasant surprise.

There was another Greek show I so wish I watched. It's not a soap opera, possibly it was a mini-series about a witch, after a bestseller by Mara Meimaridi. They tell me it was good.

[YRBB]

Oh, yes. Especially VERA was a marvel.... It was a classy production, from writing to sets, great exterior shooting (usually, half of every hour daily was outdoors), etc, etc. To this day, it stands up better than some of our primetime shows (well, it played 18:50-19:50, so it was almost primetime). It always amazed me the amount of stuff they did, even the stunts looked incredibly good (car crashes for example were real car crashes, and not a scream, lights, and a sound ). I still haven't figured out where they got the time to keep up with it all. However, both VSD and EROTAS were unique in that respect. Other soaps, like LAMPSI, KALIMERA ZOI etc were more like the US soaps, 4-5 scenes an episode, barely ever outside, melodramatic dialogue. Then again, the aforementioned soaps' HW did rip-off stories from DYNASTY to Y&R VERA was pretty fast paced, but its biggest strength was its characters and that the drama came from them.... That way, every crazy thing that happened to them was believable and saddening. (sorry, don't mean to bore you with all this ). Btw, they're going to start repeating VSD soon, which I'm happy for!

Oh, that must be OI MAGISSES TIS SMYRNIS. I never watched it, but I hear it was good.

[Sylph]

No, you're not bothering me at all! I like hearing about these things; I get envious of other countries' soaps - compared to them, ours look cheap as hell. Do you know if VSD was released on DVD?

And yes, it was Oi Magisses. I'll try to see if the book was translated in English.

[YRBB]

Unfortunately, no Greek Show has ever been turned to DVD, except from a couple from the 70s, by a magazine, who releases one episode per week as a bonus! I'd love it if they started releasing them.

[Sapounopera]

Another person from Greece here? You have no idea how shocked I was when I saw that someone was mentioning Erotas and VSD... lol

Lampsi and Kalimera Zoi were unintentionally funny a lot of times. Well, almost always.

VSD and Erotas had indeed great production, but none of them was as "operatic" as I wanted them to be. VSD had great acting and interesting storylines for the most part, while Erotas wasd never as complex or classy.

At one point a greek version of Sons and Daughters aka Forbidden Love aired here. And at least two italian formats were also adopted into daily soaps. However I still haven't seen the soap of my dreams here. None of these shows gave me what I want from a soap opera.

[YRBB]

Geia!!! I was pretty shocked, too

Yes, sometimes Lampsi and KL were hilariously funny and it wasn't the HW's intention But they were also classic, cheesy, cheap soap

I didn't know FL was modelled after S&D... But, then again, I didn't know S&D back then either....

As for VSD, you are right.... it was excellent, but it had much more realism in it and less "opera."