User Reviews

Wow this is my favorite soap opera ever. It is very greatly executed and shocks you with twists and turns nearly every episode. I loved it. I also loved the opening I thought it was original. So if it's amazing why not a 10/10? Well I took a point off because there are many unnecessary characters to drag out the show ad make it longer that were not interesting whatsoever. Or perhaps they were, but what was happening with Flora and Donatella was so much more mysterious and flawless that the rest seemed boring. And also because the big reveal is revealed waaaaay too early. There are more twists ahead so its still very interesting but they should have held the reveal until one of the last episodes it would have been shockingly stunning and much better but regardless this is a wonderful series and quite irreplaceable.

For those who enjoy a soap opera, Brazil is fertile ground, as the overwhelming majority of general TV channels in the country transmit, on average, four soap operas daily. Invariably, much of this material eventually goes around the world, being bought and broadcast in other countries. One of the most permeable markets for Brazilian teledramaturgy is, of course, my country, due to its cultural and linguistic proximity. I watched "A Favorita" twice, the first when it debuted in Portugal, around 2009, and the second now as it is being reprised these months.

The plot is based on the enormous rivalry between two women, Flora and Donatella. In the past, they were best friends and had a folk music ensemble but this friendship ended when Flora was arrested for allegedly killing her friend's husband. The novel begins when she is released, by good behavior, determined to take revenge. She knows she was innocent but believes that it was Donatella who killed her own husband and incriminated her. The story is nice and there is one thing I liked: both main characters have gray areas, so there is no "good girl" as we are accustomed to see in other works of the genre. In addition to the excellent interpretations of Patricia Pillar and Cláudia Raia, in the main characters, the novel features the good performances of Mariana Ximenes and Murilo Benício.

Belonging to a new generation of soap opera scriptwriters, the author João Emanuel Carneiro has emphasized the mystery aspect of the plot, but he did not effectively abandon those traditional ingredients of melodrama. as the series ended, Flora, the leading lady ("The favorite one"), had then become the most famous, charismatic serial killer of the entire Brazilian TV literature. The visual treatment of the show is certainly commendable. TV Globo has for a long time guaranteed a regular, high degree of lavishness. The chromatic key has been richly studied, with predominance of tan and pastel hues. But, as far as drama is concerned, there was much to want. Carneiro over-abused of his prerogative to tell a dramatic 'lie.' Of course, any piece of fiction at all may rely on the suspension of disbelief to a certain point, but Carneiro was here more concerned with manipulating his huge audience than eliciting implausibility and - dramatically speaking - handling the true nature of drama in order to convince us of his 'lies,' or, to quote Hitch, impinge us his 'McGivers.'