Ugly Betty
Premieres Friday, September 22 @ 8/7c only on ABC.
(check your local listings for schedules )
HOW a modest Colombian telenovela about a pitifully ugly woman trying to navigate the shallow waters of the fashion industry became one of the world’s most popular television shows is a Cinderella story of its own, one more unlikely than even the most optimistic screenwriter could imagine.
That show, “Yo Soy Betty La Fea” (“I Am Betty the Ugly”), could have been another one of the telenovelas — the nightly soap operas featuring a breathless blend of camp, melodrama and cliffhanger — that dominate primetime programming in Colombia. But its creator, Fernando Gaitán, had greater ambitions. So Mr. Gaitán created Beatriz Pinzón Solano, a woman with brains (Betty holds a master’s degree in economics), a heart (she is caretaker to her aging father) and a face so unfortunately contoured that it comes as a relief to find her forehead hidden under a fringe of oily black bangs.
By the end of its two-year run — 340 half-hour episodes, all written by Mr. Gaitán — “Yo Soy Betty La Fea” was Colombia’s most popular telenovela, pulling in three million viewers a night. Betty’s every move became a national obsession. With Colombia in the midst of a huge political bribery scandal, Betty briefly considered accepting money from a fabric company desperate to get into business with her boss.
It wasn’t long until Mr. Silverman of Hollywood took notice. After an unsuccessful attempt to make the show as a half-hour comedy at NBC, Mr. Silverman brought the actress Salma Hayek — who began her career as a star of Mexican telenovelas — on as a producer. They tried to find the most effective way to turn a half-hour nightly soap opera into an hour-long serial comedy-drama, and eventually they found a home for it at ABC.
“We toned down a bit of the drama,” Ms. Hayek said on the telephone. “What we didn’t want to lose was the feeling that at the end of every episode, you can’t wait to see what happens next.”
After working with two other writers, the pair discovered Silvio Horta, a young, first-generation Cuban-American writer. He was best known for two well-received science fiction shows (“Jake 2.0” and “The Chronicle”) but was itching to get into more character-based television. And it helped that he had telenovelas in his blood.
“We had one television growing up, and my mom would be watching the telenovelas every night. We had no choice. All my friends, first-generation immigrants, would make fun of them, and then become completely addicted,” said Mr. Horta, echoing the frustration of an entire generation of Latin men.
For his version Mr. Horta has held close to show’s template, with some local adaptations. Betty is a bit less ugly; Americans are apparently not ready for a unibrow in prime time. She’s also younger (played by America Ferera), works not as an assistant at a fashion house but at a fashion magazine in a Condé Nast-esque publishing empire and commutes each day to Manhattan from Queens. She’s also first-generation Mexican — Mr. Silverman and Ms. Hayek fought to keep her Latina — and, like the original Betty, has a singularly horrific fashion sense.
How will Betty play in America? Remakes of foreign shows are tricky: for every “All in the Family” (“Till Death Do Us Part” in Britain) and “The Office,” there is a “Coupling” or “The Kumars at No. 42,” a worldwide phenomenon whose American version was canceled before it was ever broadcast. “Ugly Betty” certainly faces an uphill battle — a difficult Friday-night time slot and a character who looks like she’s never heard of Bikram Yoga or macrobiotic salad dressing — yet it would be foolish to count it out. Betty has vanquished Colombian corruption and given Germany and Russia something they can agree on. Surely she won’t back down from NBC’s Friday night competition: the impossibly attractive crimefighters of “Crossing Jordan.”
(courtesy: Nytimes.com)
----------------------
Remember Yo Soy Betty La Fea? heres a picture to refresh your memory.. 
