2 hours ago, dc11786 said:

In the 1990s, when Fox launched some English language novelas, La Madrastra was the source material for Forever, which starred Maria Maynet and Mark Schneider. There were two other novelas, Acapulco Bay (which is preserved online I believe and is a variation on Tu o Nadie) and The Guilt (La Culpa).

THESE I've heard of before. For some reason I never saw them when they aired. Tu o Nadie was one of my absolute favorites of my telenovelas, and I was always sorry I missed seeing Acapulco Bay.

Do you know where online you can see it? Is it on YT?

Edited 10 hours ago10 hr by DeeVee

I had such fondness for FASHION HOUSE and was so excited to see them try telenovelas.

I watched the first few weeks as it aired or so but I was a freshman in college and soon gave up, especially with the constant flashbacks and what was kind of a false promise of Bo Derek vs Morgan Fairchild and then Fairchild didn't even properly show up until halfway through the novela lol

That being said, I've seen about half of it now (there was an entire episode of like 6 minutes of new material and the rest was flashbacks!!) but I do want to complete it.

WICKED, WICKED GAMES looked very interesting as well but I never tried it.

Too bad they couldn't have done it a little better. Not having streaming at the time also messed their chances up.

10 hours ago, All My Shadows said:

I always thought these shows would have been interesting as Saturday afternoon dramas

Yeah, kind of like those Harlequin romance movies CBS produced after they had lost their NFL rights to FOX. Empty viewing calories, but a pleasant way to kill a weekend afternoon nevertheless.

@DeeVee I'm pretty sure Acapulco Bay is on YouTube is nearly its entirety. There was also a website. There seems to be a bit of a cult following. I read Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros with my students a few years back and which watched a clip of Acapulco Bay and the same scene from Tu o Nadie so the kids could understand thereferences in the story. Acapulco Bay was very weak in terms of writing and acting from the clip we watched.

Morgan Fairchild was wasted as Sophia Blakely. The part was interesting and the setup of the story was potent for drama; she was the first wife of Maria's husband and her son, William, seduced Maria. Taylor Kinney was anattractive man, but he was hardly capable ofcarrying the dramatic story (even though they didn't really write much). I thought the Sophia / William / Maria / Luke / Michelle dynamic was interesting, but it never really popped the way it could have.

The stunt casting was always amixed bag. Bo Derek was rough. Robin Givens and Maria Conchita Alonso both played to the back of the house while Mel Harris was to tepid opposite Alonso. Alonso at least appeared to enjoy herself as much as Tatum O'Neal. Dayanara Torres (a Miss Universe I believe and Marc Anthony's ex-wife) was very bland as the lead of Watch Over Me, but I enjoyed the general story. I think Theresa Russell delivered the best performance finding the right mix of snark and dramatic flair. Russell's style though fit the material better, or so I remember.

I believe it was stated int he press that the target audience for the novelas were originally gay men which is why they went in heavy with the camp. The original intent came about because of the ratings final being tabulated for the Spanish stations and the relatI remember the original plan was a syndicated program, hence the title Desire. I can't remember if Secret Obsessions only came about because of the fold of UPN/WB or if they were going to always do two series at once. The stunt casting was definitely something that occured when MyNetworkTV arrived.

The other thing about the situation involving MyNetworkTV was that the ratings bottomed out in the final months of UPN (which was most of the affiliates that switched over). There was a preview night where they ran highlights from the first two novelas as well as a trailer for the remaining to be produced ones. And of course, originally there were the Saturday night recap shows. They dropped the recaps in episode by the end of the first round of novelas, but they still did the occasional recap episode up until the end (Saints and Sinners had a couple but seemed like less than Desire and Fashion House).

The slow death of the novelas was unfortunate. Originally Saints & Sinners and American Heiress aired 2 episodes a week on different nights, than by late April it was one episode a week. Then, it just stopped airing in June or July. I remember they originally said they would put the material on their website, but they never did.

They had bought several years worth of novelas for both series. None of the attempts to try a novela in that period panned out other than Ugly Betty. Lifetime tried Monarch Cove, but that was a bust. USA was considering a couple of properties. Rick Draughton was attached to one of them. I do think one of the big 3 networks was also considering something. MyNetworkTV's failure didn't help. Part of the MNT's issue was they were originally producing the shows with non-union writers claiming they were just "translators" when that clearly wasn't the case. The cost rose significantly when they actually had to pay people to write the shows.

10 minutes ago, dc11786 said:

I'm pretty sure Acapulco Bay is on YouTube is nearly its entirety. There was also a website. There seems to be a bit of a cult following. I read Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros with my students a few years back and which watched a clip of Acapulco Bay and the same scene from Tu o Nadie so the kids could understand thereferences in the story. Acapulco Bay was very weak in terms of writing and acting from the clip we watched.

Thanks, I'm going to definitely check it out.

There's been at least one Mexican remake of Tu O Nadie that was not nearly as much of a success (it actually really blew). It's possible it was the chemistry between stars Andres Garcia and Lucia Mendez that made the original work.

The reason Ugly Betty succeeded where others failed, IMO, is because Salma Hayek was one of the producers. She started in telenovelas and understood what made them work.

BTW, she also produced the series Like Water for Chocolate on HBO. It is SO good, and I'm saying that as someone who adores the book and the original movie adaptation.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by DeeVee