Brazil Avenue

Some shows earn their reputation, and Avenida Brasil is one of them. The premise is revenge at its purest: Rita, abandoned as a girl in a landfill by her scheming stepmother Carminha, returns as a grown woman, the chef Nina, to ruin the person who built her life on lies. Débora Falabella plays the long game with icy control, and Adriana Esteves builds Carminha into one of television’s great monsters, vain, funny and rotten to the core.

The genius is the irony engine. The audience knows who Nina is and almost nobody on screen does, so every dinner party lands twice. Murilo Benício, Cauã Reymond, Marcello Novaes and Juca de Oliveira flesh out a household of climbers and liars, and Mel Maia, heartbreaking as young Rita in the opening chapters, set a standard child actors still chase.

It is not subtle and was never meant to be. The comedy swerves broad and the plot stacks improbabilities, and that is precisely the pleasure. Exported worldwide, it remains Globo’s biggest international hit, and TV Globo is reairing it on afternoons in 2026 in the Vale a Pena Ver de Novo slot.

Stream it on Globoplay in Brazil, though availability abroad varies by region. Our score: 8/10. If you have never seen it, tonight is the night: start with the landfill chapters and try to stop.