Part of the set of “Desperate Housewives” in Argentina, a 12-acre version of Wisteria Lane that the show’s producers named Manzanares

From the moment “Desperate Housewives” began playing on Latin American cable channels last year, it was a success. Here, where telenovelas, the region’s melodramatic answer to the soap opera, dominate prime-time programming, the events on Wisteria Lane resonated with viewers who like their plots full of elaborate machinations.

Now the makers of this hit ABC series are franchising Spanish -and Portuguese - language versions of the show’s first season for broadcast by networks around the region, using star-studded local casts to re-enact the original scripts.

“Barriers are breaking down,” Fernando Barbosa said in a phone interview from Miami. He is senior vice president for Latin America at Buena Vista International Television, a branch of the Walt Disney Company, which produces the program. “ ‘Desperate Housewives’ shares certain characteristics with the telenovela, but it is based more on real life and is not as dramatized.

Three versions of the series are under way. First off the ground is the Argentine version, which will also be shown in neighbouring countries including Uruguay and Paraguay and is scheduled to go on the air in six months or so. After that comes a production in Portuguese for Brazil and a second Spanish-language version made for Colombia and Ecuador.

Activity: Match words in column A with the right meaning of those in B

A	B
1.- soap opera	a.- selling the full rights to reproduce
2.- prime time	b.- full of important actors & actresses
3.- franchising	c.- in the process
4.- broadcast	d.- the highest audience hours
5.- star-studded	e.- transmission
6.- under way	f.- telenovelas

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Go to Activity Nº3