Season 1
7 episodes Mar 22, 2019 1.0
Overview
A 1950s housewife goes to Rio de Janeiro to meet up with her husband, only to learn he's deserted her, but decides to stay and open a bossa nova club.
Seasons
2 listed- Status
- Canceled
- Seasons
- 2 seasons
- Episodes
- 13 episodes
- First aired
- Mar 22, 2019
- Last aired
- Jun 19, 2020
- Episode length
- 60m
- Network
- Netflix
Latest episode: S2 E6 Choices (Jun 19, 2020)
Season 2
6 episodes Jun 19, 2020 9.4As Malu and her friends move on from their recent tragedy, they take on career challenges, new love possibilities and confront injustices with bravery.
Cast
8 people
Reviews
5 min readThe Sound of a Woman Reinventing Herself
I’ve been thinking about the way Maria Luiza moves through Girls from Ipanema—not the plot of her transformation, but the physicality of it. The way she hesitates before stepping into a room, her fingers tightening around the strap of her purse like it’s the only thing keeping her from floating away. There’s a moment in the first episode where she stands on the balcony of her Rio de Janeiro hotel, the city sprawling beneath her in a haze of heat and possibility, and you can almost see the weight of her old life pressing against her ribs.
She’s just learned her husband has abandoned her, leaving her stranded in a city she doesn’t know, with a future she never chose. And yet, there’s something in the way Maria Casadevall holds her shoulders—just slightly squared, as if she’s already bracing for the next blow—that makes you believe she might, against all odds, choose herself instead.
This is the kind of story that’s easy to reduce to its premise: a conservative 1950s housewife opens a Bossa Nova club and discovers her own power. But Girls from Ipanema (originally titled Coisa Mais Linda, or Most Beautiful Thing) is less interested in the destination than the messy, uneven steps it takes to get there. The series, created by Giuliano Cedroni and Heather Roth, unfolds in 1959 Rio, a city on the cusp of cultural revolution, where the smooth, syncopated rhythms of Bossa Nova are beginning to drown out the old guard’s expectations.
It’s a setting ripe for metaphor—the music, the fashion, the very air of the place feels like a rebellion waiting to happen. And yet, the show resists the temptation to turn its heroine’s journey into a neat allegory. Maria Luiza’s club isn’t just a business; it’s a lifeline, a place where she can rewrite the rules of her own life, one note at a time.
What’s striking about Girls from Ipanema is how it grounds its period drama in the tactile details of everyday survival. This isn’t a glossy, romanticized version of the past, where the clothes are always crisp and the drinks never spill. The series lingers on the sweat of a crowded club, the way the humidity clings to the characters’ skin, the way the music seeps into the walls until it feels like the building itself is breathing.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsNetflix ordered eight hours, then asked for a novela, then changed the English title twice.
On 6 November 2017 Variety reported Netflix's fourth Brazilian original, Coisa Mais Linda, from Prodigo Films. The first season was billed as eight one-hour episodes. Heather Roth and Giuliano Cedroni created it. Pati Corso and Leo Moreira were on the scripts. Beto Gauss, Francesco Civita, and Caito Ortiz produced. Gauss told Variety, "It doesn't matter to us as independent producers where people are going to watch. latestnetflix.com's view is that we are a premium content company that provides different material that, at the end of the day, will be shown everywhere."
WorldScreen printed Erik Barmack, then Netflix VP of international originals. "We're eager to continue investing in the incredible storytelling Brazil has to offer, and our partners at Prodigo Films have captured just that with Coisa Mais Linda." He said the series was about self-discovery, the pursuit of dreams, and the emancipation of women. Filming was slated for 2018. 
When cameras rolled in the first week of July 2018, Netflix's cast note listed seven episodes, not eight. Maria Casadevall as Maria Luiza. Pathy Dejesus as Adelia. Fernanda Vasconcellos as Ligia. Mel Lisboa as Thereza. Photography through October. Wikipedia's episode table matches those seven, dropped worldwide on 22 March 2019. ,
The room ran in English. The club opened in Portuguese.
Cedroni later told Krishna Mahon, as reported by Noticias da TV, that Brazilian writers who spoke English built the room. The series was created, written, and approved in English, then translated. He said Kelly Luegenbiehl, then Netflix's Brazil chief, asked on day one for an "elevated soap opera," with melodrama, and for the team to make the best novela of the year. Netflix wanted Globo-familiar faces, not unknowns.
The English title started as Most Beautiful Thing. Season 2 landed 19 June 2020 as Girls from Ipanema. Ready Steady Cut flagged the swap the day of the drop. Wikipedia lists the Amy Winehouse recording of "The Girl from Ipanema" as the opening theme. Joao Erbetta scored. Netflix renewed on 13 May 2019. TELA VIVA said six new episodes would shoot in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo later that year, with the original cast returning. , ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48frEliYyVM
Fernanda Vasconcellos is credited for season 1 and a guest turn in season 2. Alejandro Claveaux enters season 2 as Wagner Pessanha, Thereza's coworker, per Wikipedia and Netflix's season 2 trailer materials. TMDB now marks the series canceled after 13 episodes. The Futon Critic files it canceled/ended after the 2019-2020 season. Nobody sourced a public season 3 kill quote. Print the status as a listing, not a leaked fight. , ,
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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