KEEP SOAP ALIVE
CW adapts another telenovela for 'Jane the Virgin'
In the youth-worshiping world of broadcast television, a scene from the new CW show “Jane the Virgin” embodies the ultimate fantasy of every network executive.
Jane (Gina Rodriguez), a young woman on the cusp of adulthood, sits down on the couch with her abuela — grandmother — watching a telenovela, one of the ultra-melodramatic soap operas long popular on Spanish-language television.
Young people watching soaps alongside older generations rarely happens in the U.S. — but it’s legit in other cultures. And Englishlanguage producers and networks are trying to get in on the action.
“I’m second generation,” says Andrea Navedo, who plays Jane’s mother Xiomara on “Jane the Virgin,” launching Monday at 9 p.m. “I grew up Puerto Rican in New York. Whenever we went to see Abuela, she was watching telenovelas. So we would watch, too. That’s the way I bonded with her.
“I love that we have that scene in the show. It’s real for me.”
It’s apparently real in a lot of Hispanic heritage households.
For the week of Sept. 22, from 8 to 9 p.m., the Univision telenovela “Mi Corazon Es Tuyo” drew more 18- to 34-year-old viewers than shows on Fox. Then the same thing happened from 9 to 10 p.m. that week. The Univision telenovela “Hasta El Fin Del Mundo” drew more 18-34s than Fox.
That’s pretty impressive when you consider that Univision broadcasts those shows in Spanish, meaning less than 20% of the country can even understand them.
What this proves is that Hispanic TV producers have done what English-language networks haven’t. They’ve gotten young adults to sit down and watch television.
“Jane the Virgin” is an attempt to Americanize a successful Latin American telenovela, Venezuela’s “Juana La Virgen.”
Jane is a young woman who’s saving herself for marriage — until she goes in for a routine checkup and through a mixup is artificially inseminated.
“Juana” was a big hit across Latin America, which hasn’t always foreshadowed success north of the border.
Nickelodeon adapted a telenovela into “Hollywood Heights” in 2012 and shut it down in four months. ABC and Sofia Vergara tried to adapt the Argentinian “Mu- jeres Asesinas” into “Killer Women” earlier this year and pulled the plug after seven episodes.
Two other adaptations have done better, “Ugly Betty” on ABC and “Devious Maids” on Lifetime. “It’s a tricky tone,” says Jennie Snyder Urman, who is writing “Jane the Virgin.” “There’s a fairytale, whimsical quality to it. At the same time, this is a telenovela, and I want to take advantage of all the fun and license that comes with that.”
Ivonne Coll, who plays Jane’s grandmother Alba, says you don’t need a sociology degree to figure out why a lot of first- and second-generation immigrant families gather around a TV show.
“I think Alba watches the telenovelas the way the first generation Jewish immigrants watched Yiddish theater,” she says. “This is what connects her to her roots.”
In the larger picture here, traditional Englishlanguage daytime soaps have been disappearing over the last two decades. At one time there were more than two dozen. Now there are four.
But some of that slack has been picked up by prime-time soaps, going back to “Dallas” and “Melrose Place” and continuing today, most prominently on ABC, with “Scandal,” “Nashville” and “Revenge.”
So English-language networks would love to find a way to get on the telenovela train.
Last year NBC signed a deal with the production company Electus to develop an English-language version of the Venezuelan telenovela “La Viuda Joven,” or “The Black Widow.”
Its final Venezuelan episode in 2011 drew 79% of the TV-viewing audience, all waiting to find out what would happen to a woman whose husbands kept dying and leaving her richer.
“We believe there is huge potential for telenovelas to be adapted and developed for American viewers,” says NBC Entertainment President Jennifer Salke. “These stories clearly have resonance across all cultures and nationalities.”
Sí, señora.