Mediático presents an entry by Juan Ramos, PhD student in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex, and one of the founding co-editors of this blog.

As a scholar researching telenovelas (and as an avid fan of this too often discarded genre), I probably watch more of these Latin TV dramas than any sane person would!

As well as watching them, I also like to write criticism about them mostly because, despite the huge success of the telenovela as a genre, very few television critics write serious in-depth pieces about it, with the possible exception of Brazil where there is a tradition of television criticism, the equivalent of which, in other Latin American countries or in Latino USA, I have yet to encounter. Generally, telenovela fans only have access to gossip pieces on stars or news about forthcoming telenovela premieres or finales. A while back, I was fortunate enough to join Todotnv, a website run by fans/critics who wanted to fill this gap.

At my personal blog, Telenovela PhD, I keep an updated list of links to all the reviews I have written on telenovelas for Todotnv. The reviews, which are all in Spanish, cover examples of the format from the USA, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, or Venezuela; and from any time period from the 1970s to the present.

I hope to go on write more “scholarly” reviews on telenovelas and Spanish-language television series for Mediático in the near future. In the meantime, if you are able to read Spanish and care to find out my opinion on some staples of the telenovela genre as well as on more recent examples, please feel free to take a look at my reviews.