João Semana

By mixing characters from two different novels and imaginative ideas from his head, Moita Flores has created a portrait of a Portugal that only existed in his head.

Written by Francisco Moita Flores, this series is a somewhat confusing mixture of characters and elements from two very different stories: on the one hand, the action and the main characters are taken from “As Pupilas do Senhor Reitor”, by Júlio Dinis. This is one of the most classic books of Portuguese romanticism, with strong appeals to the bucolic northern village life that the writer, moreover, knew very well. However, the series borrows characters and elements from Camilo Castelo Branco's "Memórias do Cárcere", especially with regard to bandit Zé do Telhado, whom the writer met in prison. Filmed in São João da Pesqueira, Penedono and Foz Coa, it has good sets and costumes, which does not make it rigorous from a historical point of view. The anachronisms are many and can be seen, in the mentality and manners of the characters.

The idea of the series is to paint a kind of global portrait of Portugal in the mid-nineteenth century, from the end of 1850 to 1870. It is a seductive but reductive exercise: Portugal was never a uniform country, and the series ignores the asymmetries and different habits between regions. What we have here is, in good measure, fantasy. Far from being history, it is a kind of story that, by mixing two novels by two authors, does justice to neither. Moita Flores recreated the characters and sometimes gave them unnatural ideas and mannerisms, which someone of that time would have obviously found strange. Júlio Dinis imagined João Semana as the ordinary village doctor, generous, helpful and available. Someone socially relevant, but who provided service to others and who was necessarily rich in the family, as university study, in these times, was the prerogative of those who could afford it. Moita Flores gave his character two characteristics that seem forced or even anac...