El Chavo del 8
The shows traces back to June 20, 1971, where it appeared as a sketch in the “Chespirito” show, broadcast on Mexico’s channel 8. In 1973, El Chavo moved to Televisa and became a weekly half-hour series. The show was cancelled in 1980 , but shorts were still produced in “Chespirito” from that year until 1992 .
At its peak of popularity during the mid-1970′s, El Chavo, having 350 million viewers worldwide, was the most-watched show in Mexican television. The frequent occurrence of Mexican idiomatic expressions makes El Chavo very hard to translate into other languages. An exception is the Portuguese language which is very similar to Spanish. Thus the Portuguese-spoken version of El Chavo is still very popular in Brazil, where the series is known as Chaves and is still broadcast by SBT.
Production and setting
Chaves or Chavo del Ocho is set in “La Vecindad“, a typical Mexican townhouse neighborhood, which is owned by Mr. Barriga who constantly comes to collect due rent, especially from Don Ramon (Seu Madruga, in the brazilian version). The sitcom explores, in a comic manner, the problems that many homeless children face on a daily basis, such as hunger, sadness and not having someone responsible to watch over them.
El Patio, the central courtyard, is the setting for most of the episodes. Surrounding the patio, are the homes of Jaimito or Jaiminho ”El Cartero”, Doña Florinda, Doña Cleotilde, and Seu Madruga. The hallway on the right leads to another courtyard (“el otro patio”), the other courtyard, which has a fountain in the middle. On the street facade at the left, La tienda de la esquina and a barber shop are shown adjacent to the neighborhood’s entry.
In the later seasons, sometimes an unnamed park was shown. Several episodes are set at a school classroom, where Professor Girafales teaches, all the child characters in the sitcom attend the same classroom. Others are set inside Doña Florinda’s restaurant. Two episodes were filmed in Acapulco, which also served as a vacation for the entire cast.
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