Elza Gomes

In 1970, during a glittering New Year's Eve party attended by the aristocracy, a young pantry maid named Zaíra is mysteriously murdered. Thirteen years later, the prime suspect—Gastão, a humble waiter and former colleague of the victim—seeks to prove his innocence with the help of his son, Nil, becoming entangled in the lives of the other party guests. The story also follows a cunning pair of jewel thieves: the sophisticated Antônia Regina and João Maria—a criminal lawyer and member of the declining aristocracy who takes up the cause of Nil's father.

After his grandfather's death, André Cajarana goes to Rio de Janeiro to understand the death of his father—whom he had always believed to be a hero—and to try to prove his innocence.

After an accident, Marcela arrives in São Paulo and decides to assume a new identity. Torn between love, she plunges into a world that is not her own.

Patricia, an orphan living in a traveling amusement park, believes the stars will bring her happiness. One day, an astrologer predicts the impossible: the young woman, an Aquarius, will fall in love with a Pisces boy, a sign initially incompatible with hers. The girl does, in fact, become enchanted by the wealthy student Renato, but he doesn't feel the same way. Patricia travels to Rio de Janeiro, where she befriends a gentleman whom she affectionately calls Mr. Pepe, unaware that he is Renato's great-uncle and the owner of the company where she begins working. Mr. Pepe discovers fraudulent activities committed by his family and decides to fake his death to observe the dispute over his inheritance.

Carlão is a taxi driver who experiences a drama of conscience after fleeing bank robbers leave a suitcase with stolen money in his car: he doesn't know whether to hand it over to the police, running the risk of being accused of being an accomplice in the robbery, or whether to use the money to solve his problems.

Professor Luciano Lima arrives in the fictional town of Nova Esperança to take over as principal of a school. A widower, he hires a governess to take care of his four children: Júnior, Babi, Zizi, and Rui. The professor and the governess, Paula, fall in love, but the romance faces strong resistance from the children, especially Babi, the most rebellious of the four. Luciano also encounters difficulties at the school. His former girlfriend, English teacher Maria do Carmo, does everything she can to steal his position as principal. Meanwhile, a group of maladjusted and rebellious students, led by the biker Rafa, disrupts the school environment and bothers the other students. In this scenario, Giovana, a young psychologist hired by Luciano to help him deal with the rebellious students, emerges. She ends up forming a love triangle with Paula and the professor.

Saramandaia is a Brazilian telenovela originally written by Dias Gomes in 1976. It's considered remarkable because of the Magic Realism (used by the author to subtly criticize the Military Regime of the time) and had 160 chapters. The story centers on the name change that the city undergoes, promoted by the younger citizens and reviled by the older ones. It also focuses on the lives of the city's quirky residents.

Set in 1940s São Paulo, the story follows Laura, a modern woman devoted to the arts who is oppressed by her husband, Natércio Prado—a wealthy man with traditional views. Amidst marital turmoil, Laura suffers a severe trauma and is even committed to an asylum by her husband. The couple separates, and the family is torn apart: Laura keeps her youngest daughter, Virgínia, while Natércio retains custody of the other daughters, Otávia and Bruna. Frail and penniless, Laura moves into the Vila Mariana home of her neurologist, Daniel. He is in love with his patient and believes her condition is physical rather than mental. Laura hides the fact that Virgínia is actually Daniel's daughter. The youngest daughter eventually returns to live with her father, where she faces hostility and harshness from the housekeeper, Frau Herta.

César, a sugar mill owner in Pernambuco, lives in Rio de Janeiro with his wife Maria Luiza and daughters, Débora and Suzy. One day, tired of his life, he decides to fake his own death and assume another identity. César does this with the help of França, the financial director of the sugar mill – which also belongs to Alaor. César and França stage a car accident, plunging off Avenida Niemeyer in Rio and disappearing into the sea. César leaves Alaor on the verge of bankruptcy and Maria Luiza and the two girls in poverty, completely transforming their lives.

'Cuca Legal' tells the story of Mário Barroso, a single aviator involved with three women at the same time: Virgínia, Irene, and Fátima. Virgínia is a wealthy businesswoman obsessed with the direction of her late father's business; Irene is a middle-class young woman who gives private piano lessons; and Fátima is a poor widow. Mário can't decide which of them is the ideal woman to give him a child with a "cool head" (cuca legal). Things get even more complicated when Maria Joaquina, nicknamed Kinu, Virgínia's mother, also catches the aviator's attention. To escape the troubles he constantly gets into, Mário relies on the help of his mother, Dalva, and Jacaré, his great friend.

The central theme of the soap opera is the struggle for political control in the interior of Bahia between the two most powerful *coronéis* (landowning bosses) of the cocoa region: Sinhô Badaró and Horácio da Silveira. Virgílio, an ambitious lawyer, is summoned to the town by Colonel Horácio but ends up becoming involved with Ester, the colonel's wife. Captain João Magalhães is a card sharp who poses as a military engineer, successfully deceiving the entire town. He falls in love with Sinhô Badaró's daughter, Donana. By the end of the story, he reveals that he had only gotten close to the Badarós out of opportunism. After numerous clashes with Sinhô Badaró, Colonel Horácio secures political power in the town of Ferradas, with the acknowledgment of the local population.

After her divorce, Malu faces challenges in supporting her daughter and reinventing herself, grappling with loneliness, work, and the search for a new place in the world.

Three English women on vacation in Brazil shake the structures of a Brazilian bourgeois family, but while one of them finds love, the other two are disappointed in flirting.

A rich man encounters a prostitute and gets confused about the nature of his feelings for her. He can't decide between attraction and repulsion.

Otavio has to find and marry Madame Bettina's daughter if he wants to inherit her fortune.

As the owner of a very famous bordello in Rio de Janeiro gets buried, an old scoundrel remembers his own past among the bohemian circles of the city.

Many stories revolving around a poor couple who, in spite of hating each other, still live together under the same roof.

Young robber, son of a prostitute who had killed herself, gets involved with two police informers, who force him to share the loot he gets.

In São Paulo, during the 1920s, a woman who is loved by a telegraphist and seduced by a slacker ends up in prostitution.

While taking a walk, Chico Bento, a boor living in the backwoods of Brazil, tells his friend Zé Lelé and girlfriend Rosinha some fantastic stories happened to him: he'd been turned into a frog, been attacked by ants and by an animal resembling a jaguar, and some other doubtful cases.

Caseli, a young writer and teacher, creates in his imagination characters who would frequent a motel, the subject of the book he is writing. He and Dilma, his student, decide to spend a night in a motel in Rio, where eight couples meet: - Fábio, visual artist and Stefânia, fashion editor of a magazine; - Ferraz, flirtatious dentist and his secretary Cleonice, shy and virgin; - Vera, wife of Ferraz and Kiko, big boy from Ipanema; - Leopoldo and his wife, an elderly couple celebrating their golden anniversary; - Detective Camilo and his assistant Dorô, who try to catch Vera in the act of adultery; - Renato, on vacation from São Paulo and Cláudia, a woman he recently met in Rio; - Gustavo and Lazinha, a couple who use extravagant artifices to achieve sexual fulfillment. In the middle of the night, the corpse of an unknown man appears, and the arrival of the police determines the most diverse outcomes for those who were looking for just one night of love.