Young Hearts

Malhação is a Brazilian television series for the teenage audience. The soap started in 1995, and was set in a fictional Gym Club called Malhação on Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro. Through the years the location varied slightly. Although the name of the soap remains the same, it is now set in the Múltipla Escolha High School. In the sixteenth season, the location became a High School placed within a Shopping mall.

By the end of the fourteenth season, each episode of Malhação began with a cold open technique, preceded by a retrospective of the previous episodes, continuing the narrative that follows. This technique was a brand of serial, used since the first season, but was abolished from the beginning of the fifteenth season.

Malhação reached its peak in the eleventh season, with Guilherme Berenguer, Juliana Didone and Marjorie Estiano as the leads, and the ratings decreased from this season on reach an incredible 42 million viewers. The series is displayed in several countries by Globo Internacional, including displays by SIC in Portugal and by ABC Family in Canada.

The show inspired others soaps, like Portuguese channel TVI's Morangos com Açúcar, which is strongly based on the Malhação format, and Brazilian channel Rede Record's, Alta Estação.