Telegraph: How Ugly Betty Turned Into A Swan
There is an awesome article posted at The Telegraph about the success of Ugly Betty. To be honest, as an American, I had only a vague idea how popular Ugly Betty was overseas:
A soapy, feelgood comedy, [America] Ferrera concedes, is not going to change the world. But with viewers in more than 130 countries, including Pakistan and Zimbabwe, Ugly Betty certainly seems to be uniting it.
[…and…]
The UK transmission of the second series, which begins on Channel 4 this week, has been brought forward in response to exceptional viewer demand.
The wide appeal of the show has always been a pleasant mystery to me, but the Telegraph’s Benji Wilson explains it succinctly:
So what’s the appeal? In part, it is the old-fashioned charm of its ugly duckling set-up, taken wholesale from the wildly popular Colombian telenovela (a sort of extended soap opera) on which the show is based.
…
Yet for those viewers instinctively put off by such an apparently saccharine plot, Ugly Betty also delivers a rather delicious line in nastiness. Betty’s colleagues at Mode are a catty bunch – beautiful, boo-hiss villains we love to hate and whose acerbic put-downs are among the wittiest lines in the show. Their presence on screen enables us to sympathise with Betty while still vicariously enjoying the superficial, bitchy world of high fashion.
Bingo!
Then, Wilson gets to the heart of things:
In Silvio Horta, they found a screenwriter who was able to preserve the soapy heart of the telenovela and also lace it with the kind of cutting comedy familiar from Desperate Housewives.
And, here’s a take I had never thought of before:
Notably, Channel 4’s marketing campaign now gives Betty equal billing with gay assistant Marc (Michael Urie) and the magazine’s receptionist Amanda (Becki Newton), who provide a chorus-like commentary on the action, frequently popping out to the dressing cupboard to exchange one-liners, their repartee not too far away from some of the best of Absolutely Fabulous. In these two underlings, who sit about in a backroom all day pouring scorn on those around them, we seem to have found two peculiarly British heroes.
Y’know, I’d never considered the Absolutely Fabulous angle, but it’s true: at starting with the last few episodes last season, and continuing into this season, Marc and Amanda provide the narrative for the show, while at the same delivering the best one-liners on television. I’ll leave it to my UK friends to decide if these characters are, in fact, “British-like”. Something tells me they are.
Wilson sums it up with a beautiful statement about Ugly Betty’s appeal:
At a time when American drama seems to be straying towards ever more complex high-concept dramas such the baffling Lost, the unwieldy 24, or quasi-Shakespearean epics such as The Sopranos or The Wire, Ugly Betty is comfort food – a simple story blessed with a script that has crackled from the start.
Source: Telegraph
Tags: america+ferrera, betty+suarez, Reviews, season+2, ugly+bettyRelated Stories
POSTED IN: America Ferrera, Betty Suarez, Reviews, Television, Ugly Betty News
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