TELENOVELA WATCH: Turkish Dramas Dubbed into Spanish Including 'Amor de Contrabando,' 'Las Mil y Una Noches' & 'Qué culpa tiene Fatmagül?'

One of the more surprising trends in Spanish speaking television is the ascendance of Turkish dramas in Latin American markets. Even countries like Chile and Argentina with a strong tradition of fine domestic telenovelas are finding imported Turkish productions at or near the top of their nightly ratings. The trend finally seems to be reaching our screens with five hours of Turkish programming a day split between Telemundo and MundoMax.

It perhaps needs to be stressed that these Turkish dramas are not telenovelas or soap operas. Rather, they are weekly dramas with episodes typically lasting 90 to 120 minutes that are telenovela-ized for Spanish speaking markets: dubbed into Spanish and edited down to 43-45 minute episodes to be run daily. Needless to say, this is not the ideal way to view these productions.

Qué culpa tiene Fatmagül?
Telemundo seems to have hit upon a satisfactory compromise in its 12 p.m. ET broadcast of the 2010-2012 Turkish series Qué culpa tiene Fatmagül? (Fatmagül'ün Suçu Ne?) by airing two hours daily, meaning their broadcast more or less corresponds to a single episode of the original Turkish broadcast. This seems to have preserved the end of episode cliffhangers from the original, though Telemundo is trimming some scenes in each episode to fit it in the time slot.

Frankly, Telemundo’s minor edits are not necessarily a bad thing having watched some of the original version of Fatmagül and finding the pacing occasionally verging on the glacial side. The long episode running time is too often filled with the padding you see in low budget movies from the 1950s and 60s. Characters never seem to just arrive at a location. No, the audience sees the characters get into their car, drive, arrive at their destination, park, exit their car, walk up the house, knock on the door, wait for the door to be answered, etc. Indeed, the lethargic pacing of Fatmagül takes some adjusting to, but it’s well worth the effort.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'Antes Muerta Que Lichita' and 'Señora Acero' Premiere Tonight, Plus a Summer Roundup

Antes Muerta Que Lichita premieres September 22 on Univision.
Photo Credit: Televisa

Is the telenovela in decline? There has not been a single hit telenovela in the US this year. Only two years ago, AMORES VERDADEROS averaged 4.5 million viewers a night; this year, only two telenovelas, MI CORAZÓN ES TUYO and HASTA EL FIN DEL MUNDO, have averaged even 3 million viewers and they concluded way back in May. A pair of telenovelas that concluded Monday, AMORES CON TRAMPA and EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS, failed to garner the usual final weeks ratings bump, limping to the finish line. The telenovelas replacing them: an apparent BETTY LA FEA rehash and the second season of maybe the worst narco-novela ever made are hardly propitious.

ANTES MUERTA QUE LICHITA (weeknights at 8 p.m. ET on Univision)
Telenovelas based on original scripts are all but extinct at Televisa. The largest producer of Spanish language telenovelas in the world averages a paltry one original telenovela a year, or about a one to seven ratio of original to remake/adaptation. This depressing reality is aggravated when their newest original telenovela, ANTES MUERTA QUE LICHITA, on the surface, looks so derivative of YO SOY BETTY, LA FEA, the most adapted, remade, and ripped-off telenovela of the past decade: an ugly duckling heroine in a bustling office setting. Even the vibrant colors of the sets shown in the promos for LICHITA recall the Tashlinesque interiors of the ABC version UGLY BETTY.

What ANTES MUERTA QUE LICHITA has in its favor is it is from a clever producer, Rosy Ocampo, all but ensuring LICHITA will be more palatable than the last two comedies Univision has aired in this time slot: the occasionally bearable MI CORAZÓN ES TUYO and the wretched AMORES CON TRAMPA. The worlds Ocampo creates in her comedies are stylized and cartoonish, but the acting is kept reasonably grounded. The vulgarity and mugging that plague Televisa comedies is usually kept in check in Ocampo productions, and she relies far less on dumb sound and visual effects.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'Yo No Creo En Los Hombres' Premeires Tonight on Univision

Yo No Creo En Los Hombres premieres tonight at 10 p.m. ET on Univision. Despite being another Televisa remake from a story by Caridad Bravo Adams dating from the middle of the last century, Yo No Creo En Los Hombres was the highest acclaimed Mexican telenovela of 2014 by Mexican critics, the winner of seven Premios TvyNovelas, and hailed as a return to form for producer Giselle González and writer Aída Guijardo (Para Volver a Amar, Alma De Hierro) following the misfire comedy Cachito de Cielo in 2012.

From the press materials: “Yo No Creo En Los Hombres is the award-winning tale of women who have lost all hope and trust in men. The pain and low self-esteem caused by members of the opposite sex leads these women to seek vengeance by any means possible. The story centers on a hardworking and beautiful young woman who suffers deeply at the hands of all the important male figures in her life and also at the hands of a malicious family that torments her.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'La Vecina' Premieres Today on Univision

La Vecina premieres this afternoon at 3 p.m. ET on Univision. It is a Mexican telenovela from Televisa produced by Lucero Suárez who is once again mining late 1990s-early 2000s foreign telenovelas for material. After a pair of adaptations of Venezuelan telenovelas: Trapos íntimos (2002) into Amorcito Corazón (2011) and Carita Pintada (1999) into De Que Te Quiero, Te Quiero (2013), Suárez now turns to the 2003 Colombian telenovela La Costeña y el Cachaco, which was rerun in the US six years ago on the channel formerly known as Telefutura.

La costeña y el Cachaco seems an odd choice for foreign adaptation and I’m curious to see how the quite specific culture clash depicted in that Colombian coastal comedy about a sophisticated, uptight urbanite moving to a Caribbean port town and meeting a free-spirited Barranquilla girl will be transposed to Mexican location and culture. Colombian coastal comedies are almost a distinct telenovela genre in themselves and it is hard to imagine the color and character will not be lost in the transposition.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'La Guerrera,' 'Uepa! Un Escenario Para Amar' Premiere, 'Fugitivos' Finale

LA GUERRERA, the Spanish dubbed international edit of the 2012 Brazilian telenovela SALVE JORGE, premieres tonight at 9 p.m. ET on MundoFox. Created by Glória Perez (O CLONE, INDIA), LA GUERRERA is about a single mother who falls victim to sex traffickers in Turkey.

LA GUERRERA stars Nanda Costa (CUENTO ENCANTADO) and Rodrigo Lombardi (INDIA), and features Cláudia Raia (LA FAVORITA), Giovanna Antonelli (O CLONE) and Carolina Dieckmann (COBRAS & LAGARTOS).

It is difficult to recommend a telenovela airing on MundoFox in prime time given the network’s egregious editing of past telenovelas including their last two Brazilian productions: LADO A LADO and RASTROS DE MENTIRAS (AMOR À VIDA), the latter being virtually unwatchable. To the network’s credit, they have followed up their butchered prime time airings with more complete reruns in the afternoons shortly after the prime time versions concluded; but I remain wary to dip into a new prime time telenovela on the network.


UEPA! UN ESCENARIO PARA AMAR
Also premiering today is UEPA! UN ESCENARIO PARA AMAR at 3 p.m. ET on Azteca. It is a remake of the 2001 Azteca telenovela COMO EN EL CINE, about a young woman living a double life – passing herself off as a psychologist while actually dancing at a bar nights to pay for the prestigious boarding school her younger sister attends.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'Lo Imperdonable' Premiere, 'Hasta el Fin Del Mundo' Finale

Lo Imperdonable premieres May 18 on Univision.

LO IMPERDONABLE premieres Monday at 9 p.m. ET on Univision. A Mexican telenovela from Televisa, it is the umpteenth version of Caridad Bravo Adams’s LA MENTIRA, which dates back to the 1950s. It is baffling why Televisa would approve another version of this story after CUANDO ME ENAMORO, a decent modern adaptation, was made by the network just five years ago.

It is a revenge telenovela: a man blames an unknown woman for his brother’s suicide and vows vengeance. He meets a beautiful woman and comes to believe she is the one who ruined his brother’s life, so naturally he seduces and marries the woman and proceeds to make her life miserable.

LO IMPERDONABLE stars Ana Brenda Contreras whose previous two telenovelas, LA QUE NO PODÍA AMAR and CORAZÓN INDOMABLE, were very successful with US audiences. Spanish actor Iván Sánchez is the protagonist, best known for his role in LA REINA DEL SUR and most recently seen as the crazy violinist antagonist of LA TEMPESTAD.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'El Señor de los Cielos' Season 3, Plus, 'Dueños del Paraíso, 'La Esquina del Diablo' and 'Quiero Amarte'

Left to Right: Carmen Aub, Carmen Villalobos, Rafael Amaya, Fernanda Castillo and Sergio Mur at a private screening of the El Señor de los Cielos third season premiere.  Photo Credit: Telemundo

EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS 3
One episode in and the latest edition of Telemundo’s repugnant narco-novela EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS (weeknights at 10 p.m. ET) is already circling the drain. The same shameless storytelling device that carried the second series is already back in full force: the incessant victimization of the poor little mass-murdering title drug lord with him getting beaten by prison guards, poisoned, and the delivery of a surprise head in a box. This is all set up to excuse the predictable atrocities he will later commit as justified revenge-taking. Rinse, repeat.

Rafael Amaya’s performance has long become monotonous - he mostly just poses menacingly and glares, grimacing through his lines as if it pains him to speak them. He concludes the first episode with a hilariously awful ugly-face fake cry that would make Blanca Soto proud.

Carmen Villalobos’s cop character is an afterthought at this point with the fans of the show just impatiently waiting for her to get murdered, but for them to be satisfied, it has to be at the hands of Amaya’s character and only after she is tortured.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'Fugitivos' Premieres Tonight on UniMás, 'Avenida Brasil' Begins Tonight in Primetime on Telemundo

FUGITIVOS premieres tonight at 9 p.m. ET on UniMás. It is a 2014 Colombian telenovela produced by CMO Producciones for Caracol. Three of the four previous CMO productions were excellent: CORREO DE INOCENTES, LA PROMESA, and LA RONCA DE ORO; and despite its shaky plotting, I also enjoyed their MADE IN CARTAGENA, aka BAZURTO, with its kinetic action set pieces. Judging by the promos, FUGITIVOS seems akin to the action of MADE IN CARTAGENA.

Emmanuel Esparza (LA POLA) stars as Julián Duarte, an innocent man sentenced to 20 years in prison for the murder of the wife of his best friend. The prison, called “La Bendita,” holds men and women separated by a wall of bars. There he meets Esperanza, played by Tatiana Vargas (RAFAEL OROZCO, EL IDOLO), who is in prison for murdering her husband to protect her daughter from him. Julián and Esperanza attempt to escape, but only Julián succeeds. Now a fugitive, he keeps a promise he made to Esperanza to deliver her diary to her daughter, Micaela, played by Laura Osma, which explains the truth behind her crime. Julián and Micaela then set off in search of evidence that will prove his innocence.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'Amores con Trampa' Premieres Tonight on Univision

Amores con Trampa premieres March 30 at 8 p.m. ET on Univision.

Amores con Trampa premieres tonight at 8 p.m. ET on Univision. Like Mi Corazón es Tuyo, the telenovela it is replacing, Amores con Trampa is a broad Mexican comedy from Televisa. It is produced by old hand Emilio Larrosa who is attempting to recapture the success of his 2009/2010 comedy Hasta Que el Dinero Nos Separ following a pair of clunkers: the banal DOS HOGARES in 2011 and the disastrous Libre Para Amarte in 2013, a telenovela that still hasn’t aired in the US.

Amores con Trampa is adapted from a 2013 Chilean telenovela titled Somos los Carmona, but the unofficial inspiration for both is the 1960s American sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. A farmer named Facundo Carmona becomes a millionaire after the government buys his land for its mines. He decides to move his wife, their four children, and their farm animals to Mexico City to seek new opportunities.

The Carmonas move next door to Santiago Velasco and his wife Isabel, who are in dire financial straits as their construction company nears bankruptcy. The Velascos plot to take advantage of their rich new neighbors with Isabel setting out to seduce Facundo in the hope of convincing him to invest in the construction company.

TELENOVELA WATCH: This Week's Finales of 'Los Miserables' (Tonight) and 'Mi Corazón es Tuyo' (Friday)

The Los Miserables finale beings at 8 p.m. ET tonight on Telemundo.

Los Miserables concludes tonight with a two-hour finale on Telemundo starting at 8 p.m. ET. Despite the title and the insistence of the network’s press materials, the telenovela had next to nothing to do with the Victor Hugo novel. Nevertheless, Los Miserables began well and featured protagonist Aracely Arámbula’s first decent performance since her juvenile roles in the mid-1990s. She is by no means a good actress, but after suffering through the likes of Blanca Soto and María Elisa Camargo in recent Telemundo telenovelas, as well as Arámbula’s own horrible performances in Corazón Salvaje in 2010 and La Patrona in 2013, her work here is at least bearable.

Less bearable was the horrific Gabriel Porras who seems to get worse with each telenovela. The opening weeks of Los Miserables were not terrible by Telemundo’s recent standards at least in part because Porras’s role was minimized. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long and soon Porras’s drug lord character was given a twin, so we could see Porras cartoonishly overact two roles. I gave up regular viewing of this telenovela at that point. What happened to the competent actor from those Azteca telenovelas from the early 2000s? The same question fits his Los Miserables co-star Aylín Mujica who was also far better in her work at Azteca than she’s ever been at Telemundo.

Telemundo’s Mexican-produced telenovelas in conjunction with Argos are in a rut. The best of this recent batch is still the first, Rosa Diamante, from 2012. The others: La Patrona, La Impostora, Los Miserables and even the narco-novela Señora Acero all seem part of the same drab, monotonous universe. Budgetary restrictions are noticeable, particularly in how they all feature a seemingly endless parade of characters sent to the same hospital and prison sets. Even the actors are drab in these recent productions, especially the supporting actors and juveniles. Part of this problem may lie in Telemundo/Argos being third in the talent pecking order in Mexico behind Televisa and Azteca. Even with these flaws, the Telemundo/Argos productions are still better than what the network’s been churning out of Miami in the last year, Dueños del Paraíso included.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'La Sombra del Pasado' Premieres Tonight; Plus, 'Que te perdone Dios,' 'Tiro de Gracia,' 'Dueños del Paraíso' and 'Quién Mató a Patricia Soler?'

La Sombra del Pasado premieres tonight at 7 p.m. ET on Univision taking the place of the mercifully departed La Gata. A Mexican telenovela from Televisa, La Sombra del Pasado is a remake of the 2001 telenovela El Manantial. It is produced by MaPat L. de Zatarain who is coming off the enjoyable La mujer del Vendaval.

La Sombra del Pasado is a hacienda telenovela about neighboring ranches and an affair between the owner of one of the ranches with his neighbor’s wife that leads to a death and a deep hatred between the two families. A love then grows between the son and daughter of the feuding families.

Michelle Renaud and Pablo Lyle play the protagonists, both in their first leading roles. Renaud was the appealing pianist cousin of Ariadne Diaz’s heroine in La mujer del Vendaval and Lyle was the juvenile lead of Por Siempre Mi Amor. In that telenovela, Lyle was paired opposite Thelma Madrigal, who plays the third side of the central triangle in La Sombra and also featured in La mujer del Vendaval as the hero’s spoiled sister.

TELENOVELA WATCH: Drug-Themed Series 'Duenos del Paraiso,' 'Tiro de Gracia' and 'La Esquina del Diablo'

Kate del Castillo, José María Torre and Jorge Zabaleta star in
Telemundo super series Dueños del Paraíso.

Dueños del Paraíso
A trio of narco-novelas premiered in the US last week headlined by the highly anticipated Dueños del Paraíso (weeknights at 10 p.m. ET) on Telemundo. A co-production by Telemundo and the Chilean TVN, but mostly produced in Miami, Dueños del Paraíso marked the return of Mexican actress Kate del Castillo to Spanish language television, her first telenovela since La Reina del Sur in 2011, the only genuine hit in Telemundo’s history and, for its first half at least, the best production to come from the network. Any hopes for another La Reina del Sur dissipate in the opening minutes of Dueños del Paraíso – it’s a clunker: boring and clichéd with contrived, lazy plotting and amateurish direction.

Dueños del Paraíso opens with the heroine’s voice over saying, “There are no good guys or bad guys, no heroes or villains,” already a lie as the next hour proceeds through melodramatic devices to tell the audience exactly who the “good guys” and “bad guys” are going to be in this story.

Anastasia Cardona, the heroine portrayed by Kate del Castillo, is given an absolving sob story in the opening scene when her long-absent mother arrives at her birthday party (really, an old woman is able to waltz uninvited into the birthday party of a drug lord’s wife) and it’s revealed she was a prostitute who abandoned Anastasia. Talk about lazy writing – there is nothing organic or believable in the scene, no reason we should care about these women whose names we’ve literally just learned a few minutes earlier, no reason except one is played by Kate del Castillo who we know is the star and needs to be fed constant opportunities to remind everyone she’s an actress. Anastasia Cardona isn’t a character, she’s an actress reel.

TELENOVELA WATCH: Best & Worst of 2014

(This look back at the telenovelas of 2014 is US based, covering productions that aired at least half their episodes this calendar year on a US broadcast network.)

I did not see any great telenovelas broadcast in the US this year, but there were a number of decent ones. The return of Brazilian telenovelas to our network television was a welcome change after an absence of a few years and bolstered an otherwise mediocre year. While I don't think Lado a Lado or Avenida Brasil are great telenovelas, they are substantially better than the product reaching our screens out of Mexico, Colombia and Miami.

Lado a Lado is a Brazilian telenovela produced by Globo in 2012 that reached our screens this year thanks to MundoFox. It is the story of a profound friendship forged between two women of different backgrounds who dare to live their lives in ways that conflict with the misogynistic and racist society of Rio de Janeiro in the first decade of the twentieth century. Isabel, played by Camila Pitanga, is a black woman ostracized when she becomes pregnant with a lover's child while her fiancé is missing, unbeknownst to her, locked in jail. Laura, played by Marjorie Estiano, is the daughter of a conservative ex-baroness, played by Patrícia Pillar, who wishes to work outside the home rather than settle for the confining role of housewife her social class and mother demands of her, who later faces the additional stigma associated with divorce. The performances by Pitanga and Estiano are richly detailed and moving. Camila Pitanga has the beauty and aura that make her character's international stardom when she introduces the Paris art world to samba believable, and Estiano's cheerful hoyden is the warmest, most likable soul depicted in a telenovela in a long time.

As the friendship between the two women is the central relationship in the telenovela, their love interests, by necessity, take a secondary role. Only one of the love stories really works, the pairing between Estiano and Thiago Fragoso as her patient, sympathetic husband. The chemistry between Estiano and Fragoso is very strong and their relationship is richly developed. Rather less successful is the pairing between Pitanga and Lázaro Ramos, which after an initial dinner, skips ahead a year, meaning all of its development occurs off-screen. Ramos is an excellent actor, but he is saddled with a dull role as the white-hatted, virtuous hero.

Lado a Lado relies too heavily on conniving villains setting out to ruin the lives of the heroines, perfectly reasonable devices in most telenovelas, but clashing with the loftier ambitions of this telenovela. The stereotypical villains detract and distract from the telenovela's true conflict between the heroines and the racist and misogynistic society as a whole. Better is when a conflict stems from an otherwise moral character, such as when the kind French lady employing Isabel, who arranged for her to be wed in the same church deemed worthy by the ex-baroness for her daughter's wedding, fires her after discovering the baby she is carrying wasn't fathered by her fiancé.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'Tierra de Reyes' Premieres Tonight on Telemundo

Gonzalo Garcia Vivanco as Flavio Gallardo, Aarón Diaz as Arturo Gallardo,
Christian de La Campa as Samuel Gallardo in Tierra de Reyes --
Photo Credit: Telemundo

Can you really make a telenovela called Tierra de Reyes (“Land of Kings”) in Miami? Apparently so, as Telemundo’s Miami hacienda telenovela premieres tonight at 9 p.m. ET. Los Miserables will move up an hour taking the thankfully departed Reina de Corazones time slot at 8 p.m. ET.

Tierra de Reyes is a new version of Telemundo’s Pasión de Gavilanes, a 2003 Colombian telenovela produced with RTI that is arguably the network’s most successful production, at least in terms of its international popularity. Pasión de Gavilanes was itself a remake of the 1994 Colombian telenovela Las Aguas Mansas, which also spawned an unfortunate Mexican production from Televisa in 2008 called Fuego en la Sangre that ludicrously miscast all its principals. That did not prevent Fuego en la Sangre from becoming a hit in the US and it is still regularly rebroadcast. Pasión de Gavilanes is also constantly being rerun which calls to question the wisdom of Telemundo going to this well again, particularly as their Miami studio seems inadequate for a hacienda telenovela like this.

The story, from the press release, is of “three brothers out for revenge against the family they hold responsible for the tragic and mysterious death of their younger sister. In their search for the truth, Arturo, Flavio and Samuel Reyes set out to conquer the beautiful daughters of hacienda owner Ignacio Del Junco, the man they suspect of causing their sister’s death. But fate makes them victims of their own trap and they end up falling in love with their enemies, Sofía, Irina and Andrea.”

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'En la Boca del Lobo' Premiere; 'Reina de Corazones' Rushed Ending; Plus, 'Los Miserables,' 'La Gata,' 'El Chivo' and 'Señora Acero'

EN LA BOCA DEL LOBO premieres tonight on UniMás at 10 p.m. ET. It is a Colombian narco-novela produced by Sony and Teleset based on the book "At the Devil's Table: The Untold Story of the Insider Who Brought Down the Cali Cartel" by former L.A. Times journalist William C. Rempel. The title of the book is probably as much a synopsis as required, but more details from the press release:

“The story centers on Ricardo Salgado, an engineer and soldier who rises to become head of security for the godfather of the Cali cartel, one of the world’s largest crime organizations and at war with the Medellin Cartel. After losing his best friend and family, Ricardo has nothing else to lose. Looking for redemption in a world full of corruption, he’s willing to turn in the Cali Cartel to the CIA. But when the operation goes south, Ricardo see himself in the ‘wolf’s mouth’ and he must fight to stay alive.”

Luis Fernando Hoyos (ROSARIO TIJERAS) stars as Ricardo; and the cast features Carolina Acevedo (COMANDO ELITE) as Ricardo’s love interest, and Lucho Velasco (LA VIUDA NEGRA) and Ricardo Vesga (LA MARIPOSA) as two of the heads of the Cali Cartel.


REINA DE CORAZONES
Telemundo is giving the bum’s rush to REINA DE CORAZONES (weeknights at 8 p.m. ET), announcing it is in its final weeks while editing together three episodes a night into a single hour. It is rare for Telemundo to slice-and-dice their telenovelas in this fashion, but REINA DE CORAZONES is a special case because it was recorded long before airdate. In the past, Telemundo recorded their telenovelas close to airdate allowing for quick adjustments to story and character based on audience reaction. A flop telenovela would sometimes see drastic narrative shifts in an attempt to boost viewing figures, as when EL FANTASMA DE ELENA in a single week killed off a half-dozen characters and removed its supernatural angle or RELACIONES PELIGROSAS moved the students to the background and emphasized the storylines of the teachers and parents.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'Las Bravo' Premieres Tonight on Azteca

LAS BRAVO premieres tonight at 8 p.m. ET on Azteca. It is a Mexican telenovela from Azteca based on a 2013 Chilean telenovela called LAS VEGA’S. It features a highly unusual premise for a telenovela, from the official synopsis:

“LAS BRAVO is the story of Valentina Bravo and her three daughters – wealthy, privileged and prejudiced women whose sheltered world falls apart with the death of the family’s patriarch. Left behind with an exorbitant debt, the four women are forced to push aside their pride and get their hands dirty managing their newly found cash cow – a strip club for women. Las Bravo must learn to get along with a group of male performers equally desperate for survival. Along the way, the Bravo family will learn independence, find themselves and discover plenty of opportunities for love.”

LAS BRAVO stars Edith González as Valentina. González is enjoying something of a renaissance at Azteca after hitting a bit of funk in the late 2000s at her longtime home, Televisa, bottoming out with a pitiful role in CAMALEONES in 2009. Her fascinating turn as DONA BÁRBARA for RTI/Telemundo in 2008 briefly interrupted the Televisa sludge, but her move to Azteca in 2011 to star in CIELO ROJO marked a full-on rejuvenation in her talents as an actress. Her performance in VIVIR A DESTIEMPO in 2013 is one of the crowning achievements in her career that dates back to child roles in the 1970s and includes the lead in the landmark 1993 version of CORAZÓN SALVAJE. One hopes LAS BRAVO will continue her Azteca quality streak.

TELENOVELA WATCH: Premieres Tonight - 'Rastros De Mentiras' on MundoFox, 'Los Miserables' on Telemundo

RASTROS DE MENTIRAS, the Spanish-dubbed, international edit of the 2013 Brazilian telenovela AMOR À VIDA, premieres tonight on MundoFox at 9 p.m. ET. It is the fourth major work from Globo to reach broadcast television in the US this year following LADO A LADO, AVENIDA BRASIL and LA VIDA SIGUE, breaking a long drought of Globo productions being consigned to pay television in this country. FINA ESTAMPA and ESCRITO EN LAS ESTRELLAS, a pair decidedly mediocre Globo telenovelas, were also broadcast this year, with FINA ESTAMPA still running weekdays at noon ET on Telemundo.

The plot of RASTROS DE MENTIRAS concerns Paloma, a woman from a wealthy family of doctors who struggles to follow in their footsteps. While the family is touring Peru, Paloma’s conniving brother Felix, who hopes to be the sole heir of the family’s wealth, reveals to her she was secretly adopted. Devastated by the news, Paloma runs off with a lover she met on the trip.

Paloma gets pregnant and returns to Brazil. She winds up giving birth in a bathroom. Felix finds her unconscious, takes the baby and abandons her in a dumpster where she is found by Bruno, a kind man who coincidentally recently lost his wife and son in childbirth. Bruno raises the child as his own. Years later, fate brings Bruno and Paloma together and the pair begins to fall in love.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'El Señor de los Cielos' Finale Airs Tonight; 'Señora Acero' Premieres Tuesday; 'Cosita Linda,' 'Quiero Amarte,' 'El Chivo' Debut This Week

Tonight is the finale of the second series of Telemundo's narco fantasy EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS at 10 p.m. ET. A success for the network, it seems likely there will be a third series, so it also seems likely tonight's finale will be as unsatisfying as last year's finale.

I did not care much for the first series of EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS and found this second series substantially worse. Indeed, I think EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS 2 is the worst telenovela I've seen this year. Sure, Telemundo's EN OTRA PIEL features worse acting, writing and production values, but EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS 2 is morally reprehensible in its deification of its drug lord protagonist.

I've mentioned in a previous article the crude tactics these narco-novelas use to manipulate viewer sympathies for their drug lord protagonists through the constant imperiling of their family members, but EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS 2 takes this device to shameless extremes. Over the course of this season, the protagonist drug lord has had his young children threatened with a knife to their throats, his mother shot, lost a baby through a miscarriage, his son shot, his daughter kidnapped and finally his ex-wife shot. He is ever the wronged party, ever the victim, so his violent acts are always justified. Even a final hit gone wrong resulting in an unintended loss is presented so the scenes can ultimately be about his pain.

The persistent victimhood of the drug lord is accompanied with incessant lionization of his virility. Has any fictional character since the also vile James Bond needed such overkill to bolster his supposed sexual desirability? The female cast is virtually reduced to the role of harem. The only detractor is the cop played by Carmen Villalobos, whose role in this second series was reduced to little more than standing miffed with her hands on her hips and looking stupid, bested again and again by the intellectually superior drug lord.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'Manual Para Ser Feliz' Final Week; Thoughts on 'Hasta El Fin Del Mundo' and 'La Malquerida'

Manual Para Ser Feliz (weekdays at 3 p.m. ET) is entering its final full week on MundoFox. This quirky and charming Colombian telenovela really grew on me. There is a shaggy dog quality to its characters, not just the misfits working in the office, but the leading lady fashion designer and her cousin and even the villains that I just found very appealing. It is a modest production that never seems to be reaching for its effects. There is very little plot and almost no actual jokes – the interest and humor comes in observing the little details in the characters’ lives and their day-to-day interactions with each other. In a telenovela format which deals almost exclusively in larger-than-life dramas, there is a cheeky perversity in how Manual Para Ser Feliz focuses on the small and mundane.


Hasta El Fin Del Mundo
There is an unfortunate déjà vu for telenovela watchers who keep abreast of international productions. The Mexican produced Hasta El Fin Del Mundo is the third version of this story I’ve encountered in a couple years after Dulce Amor, the Argentine original, and a current Chilean version called El Amor lo Manejo Yo. In the first few weeks, the two new versions are almost scene-for-scene retreads of the original.

For those coming to the story fresh, Hasta El Fin Del Mundo (weeknights at 9 p.m. ET on Univision) is a respectable version. It is similar in structure to another often produced Argentine telenovela, Amor en Custodia, which was most recently remade as Amores Verdaderos, only instead of a wealthy mother and daughter romancing their bodyguards, Dulce Amor and Hasta El Fin Del Mundo feature a pair of wealthy sisters falling for their chauffeurs.

Pedro Fernández is an atypical leading man. He is not believable as the neighborhood lothario and his acting is filled with too many ah-shucks mannerisms; but there is an earnestness and charm that helps sell the budding romance with the leading lady played by Marjorie de Sousa. He is a likable performer and the fact he isn't a run-of-the-mill telenovela dreamboat only means the producers, writers and actors have to work harder to build a convincing relationship between the protagonists based on something more substantial than the stereotypical telenovela instant romances attained by merely gazing into each other’s eyes.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'La Gata' Premieres Tonight on Univision

La Gata premieres tonight at 7 p.m. ET on Univision. A Mexican production from Televisa, this is the latest version of a stalwart telenovela storyline originally written by Inés Rodena in the late 1960s. La Gata is produced by Nathalie Lartilleux whose previous telenovela, the similar Corazón Indomable, was a hit last year in both Mexico and the US.

The plot of La Gata is as rudimentary as telenovelas get: rich boy meets poor girl, falls in love, his family disapproves and strives to separate the lovers.