Boa Noite Brasil

Watching TV tonight, I ran across "Sabado Gigante" on the Spanish TV station. For those of you not familar with SG, the closest I can describe it is like a Hee Haw in Spanish. The show lasts for hours, and is a mish-mosh of comedy skits, live band performances, and commentary; all the while beautiful latinas in revealing outfits prance around in a seemingly pointless manner. I am willing to bet more than once when you were flicking through the channels one lonely Saturday night and you came across this show and the former caught your attention. The host Don Francisco, a German-Chilean, has apparently been hosting the show for decades. He tapes the show in Miami every week, then flies home to Chile. Nice.

Anyway, why am I bringing this up? SG reminds me of a couple of Brazilian TV shows. These type of variety shows are all the rage in Brasil (of course, Novelas and Soccer rule the airwaves; I'll come back to that another day), two I remember the most are "Boa Noite Brasil" and "SuperPop". Both are shown live, with production values not quite what you would expect from Oprah or Letterman, but more in line with Jerry Springer or Maury. They each come on at about 9 or 10pm, and run about 2 hours. Boa Noite Brasil is hosted by Gilberto Barros, a rather large man, who captivates his audience one day with wacky "Battle of the Sexes" contests, the next a serious topic like recovering from cancer or some other illness, and another day would be a "desfile de moda" - fashion parade. By fashion, most nights meant lingerie or bikini show. Gorgeous models parade on stage in lingerie and high heels while Gilberto and a panel of fashion experts talk in detail about the "fashion". Yea. Right. The fashion. The camera pans up the girl's body slowly, stopping about 1/2 way up and then again at about 3/4 of the way up. This would shock even Richard Bey's audiences.

In this clip, the show's topic is "Electrolysis - A treatment for cellulite". I don't remember seeing this particular show, but I'm willing to bet the girls were on the benches, bastically naked, while Gilberto and crew discussed the pros and cons of electrocuting your ass to remove cellulite. In this clip, one of the models falls off the bench. Remember - the show is live. Gilberto does his best to cover.




The other show, Superpop, I believe considers itself to be the Oprah of Brasil. The hostess is Luciana Gimenez, who's claim to fame prior to hosting the show was sleeping with Mick Jagger and having a baby by him. (As a side note, when the Stones were in Rio this year playing a free concert for 1.5 million of their closest friends, the country was a-flutter with the big question - will Mick go to see Luciana? He didn't.) Luciana does tackle some more serious issues like Oprah might, but still throw in a transexual discussion and, of course, desfiles once or twice a week. My wife liked Superpop, and I guess I did too. As I got better at Portuguese, it started making more sense. This is a commercial for Superpop which runs covers a bit of everything you might expect to see.



Go to Youtube and do a search for "Boa Noite Brasil" or "Superpop" and you'll see what I mean. You don't really need to understand Portuguese to get a feeling for the shows.