Portugal always seems to be a decade behind all other countries when it comes to television and cinema.
Firstly, we have to mention the two positive points of this series: the cinematography is quite professional compared to recent years on television in Portugal and without a doubt the production design is quite good.
Now the negative points: this series supposedly has the desire to offer "Morangos com Açúcar" again to fans of the series, but these are not the "Morangos com Açúcar" that we knew.
We know that the series was never, never good - the series was broadcast in the 2000s when most Portuguese only had 4 channels and little to offer in terms of entertainment to younger teenagers - the only season of the series that was good in terms of acting and writing maybe it was season 7 - where the actors were actually actors and not top models coming from an agency.
But going back to this sequel of "Morangos com Açúcar" - we didn't need this - the series has always been cringe, it was almost impossible for this series to escape the same fate. The script is really bad, the development of the characters is very stupid, poorly written and extremely sudden, the fact that they want to bring more ethical representation is a positive point, but instead of representing the thousands of students from Latin America that we have in our country decide to place 2 actors from Spain - as if the Spanish people would move to Portugal with the state of our politics and economy.
In terms of directing, it's terrible - I don't know what João Gomes and Francisco Antunez have in their heads to think that this project would be good.
And the actors in this series? Terrible. Poor young people who have no fault of their first acting job and can still grow in this world of acting, but there are N people with their age in Portugal in amateur theaters in our country who perform a thousand times better - but as TVI is known for having top models and influencers in their series/soap operas instead of actors, which is why the country is not progressing in terms of acting. And the "veteran" actors in this series are even more disgraceful, especially Rita Pereira (who, to this day, people know that she can't act and is only on television because she is a beautiful woman).
"Morangos com Açucar" was a series that had almost 250 episodes in one year, they are trying to impact nostalgia in a terrible way in 30 episodes.
Apart from "Rabo de Peixe", "Gloria" and "A Espia", I hope that one day Portuguese actors will be proud of our television history that for now we continue to drown.
