Seven farms, one town five and a half hours away by road, and 3,361 pieces of costume carried out to the wetland for a single month of shooting. That was the logistical bill for putting TV Globo’s Pantanal remake in the actual Pantanal, in Mato Grosso do Sul, and not on a set.
The series premiered on 28 March 2022 and its last episode was due on Friday 7 October. Over those six months it did something Brazilian television had not managed for a decade, according to O Globo: it got a polarised country talking about the same programme.
The numbers
The audience in the slot rose by 34% compared with the previous novela there, “Um lugar ao sol”, O Globo reported. On Globoplay it became the most-watched novela since the streaming platform launched in 2015. On Twitter it racked up more than 2.3 million posts between the premiere and 20 September.
Young viewers were the surprise. Amauri Soares, a TV Globo director, said audiences aged 15 to 29 grew by 30%. “There were almost a million more young people every night compared with the last novela,” he said.
An old story, refreshed
The 1990 original was written by Benedito Ruy Barbosa for the now-defunct TV Manchete. Its grandson-author, Bruno Luperi, aged 34, wrote the remake. His premise, as he put it, was modest: “A novela is a photograph of a social context. The one from ‘Pantanal’ had aged, it needed a new one.”
The biggest shift was in a single character. In the first version, Maria Bruaca was, in Luperi’s words, rather hated and treated as a floozy. This time viewers cheered for her. Isabel Teixeira, who played her, found herself called Maria in the street. Marcos Palmeira, who played Tadeu in 1990 and returned as his father, Zé Leôncio, noted that three decades ago everyone in the series seemed to be naked. This time the talk was of the ranch hands’ masculinity, and of ancestral machismo.
The remake was not without critics. Clarice Greco, author of a book on telenovela nostalgia and fandom, said the absence of Indigenous characters stood out more because the story was set in Mato Grosso do Sul without taking up questions of land and rights. It was, O Globo wrote, the series’ main stone in the boot.
The finale
DCI previewed the last episode with four weddings, among them Zé Leôncio and Filó, and a horse race for a silver saddle that ends differently from 1990. In that version Jove and Zé Lucas gave the saddle up to their brother. This time Tadeu was said to win it on the track. Zé Leôncio, the cattle baron, was reported to die of a heart attack. Several actors from the 1990 cast, including Cristiana Oliveira and Sérgio Reis, were announced for the wedding party.
From Monday 10 October the 9pm slot goes to Travessia, by Glória Perez.
Sources
- Por que 'Pantanal' fez tanto sucesso? Atores, autor e crítica refletem sobre pontos altos e baixos do remake – O Globo
- Último capítulo da novela Pantanal 2022: 7 finais esperados hoje – DCI
