Roque Santeiro

Roque Santeiro is a Brazilian primetime telenovela produced and broadcast by TV Globo. It premiered on 24 June 1985 and ended on 21 February 1986, replacing Corpo a Corpo and was replaced by Selva de Pedra. It was created by Dias Gomes based on a play O Berço do Herói (Hero's Cradle) and starred Regina Duarte, Lima Duarte, José Wilker, Lucinha Lins, Yoná Magalhães, Paulo Gracindo, Armando Bógus, Cássia Kis Magro, Elizângela, Fábio Júnior, Lídia Brondi, Cláudio Cavalcanti, Cláudia Raia, Lutero Luiz, Maurício Mattar, Eloísa Mafalda and Ary Fontoura. It was directed by Paul Ubiratan and has co-written by Aguinaldo Silva. Roque Santeiro became a great success, with high viewership levels, and is recognized today as one of the best telenovelas of all time. It was distributed to several different countries around the world, and had an audience of 60 million viewers (out of approxmimentally 135-138 million Brazilians at the time), and is currently the most-watched show in the history of Brazilian television. Plot In the tiny poor town of Asa Branca, in the middle of Brazilian Northeast, Roque Santeiro is worshiped as a saint. He was supposedly killed by a bandit, 18 years ago, trying to save the local church. After his disappearance, local leaderships such as landowner Sinhozinho Malta and mayor Florindo, took profit on that to control the humble population. They even make up a widow, Porcina, who should have married Roque secretly before his death. What they don't expect is that Roque is alive, and he's back to, allegedly, "save his people". Now Malta, Florindo, Porcina, and others must hold him down and explain the "truth" to their commoners, in a desperate attempt to save their own bottoms. Meanwhile, mysterious facts surround Asa Branca, such as a Werewolf, a film crew who are trying to shoot a movie about Roque's story, and violent murderers.