Sintonia

Really great series about the life, dreams and problems of some friends in a Favela in São Paulo. Binge watched it in one evening.

It's written like a regular Brazilian Soap Opera, there is a classic storyline, the actors are not great but not terrible, there is a little bit of spice to it, maybe because its a "favela" centered story I was expecting something extraordinary. Still would watch it before going to bed though. About the slangs, I'would much rather have this many slangs than actors speaking proper portuguese, no one speaks proper portuguese specially in a poorer neighborhood. Wouldnt be able to tell if it's closer to the real life since i've never been allowed inside a favela once.

If anything, I would want to see more spice to it, and remove the red and blue filter in every scene.

A contemporary view of São Paulo youth living in low-income communities where financial opportunities are scarce. The main characters are 3 slum clichés: a drug dealer, an evangelical and a "funkeiro" - singer of Brazilian funk music. The characters are likeable and the story is interesting.

Sintonia is a fast-paced series about three young friends trying to make it out of the Favela in one way or the other. It depicts the reality of life in the poorer parts of Brazil pretty well and manages to be entertaining and fun. However the story moves a little too fast at times and there is not enough character development. Things kind of just happen off-screen and it moves quickly from one plot to another without properly exploring the various plot points to their logical conclusions first. This is the biggest drawback of the series and I see no reason why they couldn't have created more depth because there are a lot of scenes that are unnecessarily long and could be cut down in favor of adding more scenes instead. That would really have helped to flesh out the series and transformed it from merely a good series to a great one.

Even though I am not Brazilian I watch the show with English subtitles and read it while the actually Brazilian audio is on. Also this show depicts some of what real people and kids have to go through.