Sintonia

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.

Sintonia does a fair job in depicting life in the slums (favelas) of Brazil's largest city - São Paulo. The lives of a young rapper (funkeiro), evangelical and gangster are intertwined in a simple and predictable story. The sad reality is that not many paths exist for those in the favelas. Netflix has my praise for taking the favela to a global public, perhaps the world now know that those in the favelas are are only trying to live a life like anyone else.

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.

This series started out great with interesting stories and characters. What ruins the series is all the religious nonsense. They should have made a much better path for "Rita". They clearly show that the church and priest is all about the money, but there is nothing more to it... "Rita" is portrayed as smart, but she still falls for the religious nonsense and that is just wrong