Malhação

Malhação (Brazilian Portuguese: [maʎa'sɐ̃w], Workout in English) is a Brazilian soap-opera for the teenage audience. The soap started in 1995, and was set in a fictional Gym Club called Malhação on Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro. Through the years the location varied slightly. Although the name of the soap remained the same, it was set in the Múltipla Escolha (English: Multiple Choice) High School for nine seasons. In the twenty-second season, the location returned to be a gym, the Gael's Martial Arts Gym, placed within the art school Ribalta.

By the end of the fourteenth season, each episode of Malhação began with a cold open technique, preceded by a retrospective of the previous episodes, continuing the narrative that follows. This technique was a brand of serial, used since the first season, but was abolished from the beginning of the fifteenth season.

Malhação reached its peak in the eleventh season, with Guilherme Berenguer, Juliana Didone and Marjorie Estiano as the leads, and the ratings decreased from this season on reach an incredible 42 million viewers. The series is displayed in several countries by Globo Internacional, including displays by SIC (between 1995 and 2007, airing with the name "New Wave") in Portugal and by ABC Family in Canada.

The show inspired others soaps, like Portuguese channel TVI's Morangos com Açúcar, which is strongly based on the Malhação format, and Brazilian channel Rede Record's, Alta Estação.

Plot

The plot of Malhação tells stories of everyday life of teenagers, as his daily conflicts, including school, friends, families, and especially their relationships, which occupy the central focus of all the seasons. Every season, a different couple of protagonists occupies the core of the whole story.

Cast

Like American soap operas, cast and characters change from year to year, but actors and characters who have stayed for long in the soap are, among others, Alexandre Slaviero whose character "Kiko" has experienced changes (he has gone from student, to bad boy, to steroid addict, to model) and Sérgio Hondjakoff, whose character Cabeção, was in the story from seventh to twelfth season.

The shrewish lady Miss Vilma, performed by Bia Montez, and the biology teacher Afrânio, performed by Charles Paraventi, were the characters who remained in the series for the longest time. Both stayed in the soap from 2001 to 2007.

Protagonists of the seasons

References

External links

• (Portuguese) Official Website
• Globo TV International
• Malhação at the Internet Movie Database