Yo soy Bea (2006)

Yo Soy Bea is a Spanish series loosely based on the original Colombian telenovela Yo Soy Betty La Fea. In the Spanish version, the lead actress, Bea (short for Beatriz) is shy, homely, but very intelligent and sweet. Despite her homely and mousy looks, because of her brilliant resume, she is given a job as the secretary of the Director General of Bulevar 21, a trendy fashion magazine. She inevitably falls in love with her boss, Alvaro Aguilar, a very attractive, wealthy young man with two major flaws. His suave and charismatic personality and dashing good looks makes him irresistible to most women, and he will not hesitate to seduce them, in spite of having an official girlfriend, Cayetana, who is also the contents director at the magazine. Alvaro is also a compulsive liar, a mechanism he uses to escape from the numerous awkward situations he puts himself in. Alvaro's chief rival is Cayetana's brother, Diego. Diego persistently plots to have Alvaro removed as General Director of the magazine and to take over his job by sabotaging Alvaro's plans for the magazine's expansion. As a consequence of a debt he incurs and in order to keep Diego from taking over the Magazine's capital, Alvaro decides to set up a fake firm, headed by his secretary, Bea, and to move all of the Magazine's capital into this firm. But, in order to keep Bea on his side, and to continue to accept a situation she knows is illegal, he preys on her affection for him, and pretends that he has fallen in love with her. Bea eventually finds out that her relationship with Alvaro has not been real, and broken-hearted ends their affair. But, Alvaro has become a victim of his own plot, and has actually really fallen in love with Bea. The Spanish version differs from the original Colombian version in that the story of secondary characters is more deeply developed, which inevitably has made the series about three times longer than the original version. The plot line dealing with the rivalry between Alvaro and Diego is extended. Bea is arrested, but Alvaro strikes a deal with his rival to gain her release in exchange for his shares in the business. In the end, it is Alvaro that ends up in jail, albeit briefly. By the time of his release, however, Bea, believing that Alvaro had always used her, has decided to give Nacho, an attractive attorney that works for Bulevar 21, an opportunity to help her forget her past. The colorful cast of secondary characters, including Barbara, Cayetana's sexy bombshell but air-headed best friend, Santi, Bea's geeky best friend, Gonzalo, Alvaro's best friend, who happens to only get him into more trouble, Sandra, Cayetana's sister, who has had so much plastic surgery she is known as the "transformer", and Richard, the magazine's arrogant creative gay photographer, makes for amusing situations and subplots. But, the chemistry between the lead characters, Bea and Alvaro, who have been a real life couple since almost the beginning of the series, is perhaps he most appealing thing about this Spanish telenovela.