Television en fuego

FOR HAIR-RAISING PLOT TWISTS, “Desperate Housewives” has nothing on “Contra Viento y Marea” (“Against All Odds”), a telenovela running on the Spanish-language Univision network. Unable to marry the man she truly loves, orphaned heroine Natalia instead weds his half-brother, who is dying, but then she becomes pregnant with her lover’s child, and her husband -- who is the secret obsession of a villainess determined to keep Natalia and her lover apart -- learns the truth.

Juicy, convoluted and bursting with big chests (on cast members of both genders), the telenovela -- a cross between a nighttime soap opera and a miniseries, because shows end after three to six months -- is a staple of Spanish-language TV. Many have been translated into multiple languages and broadcast to avid audiences overseas, but they’ve never turned up in English on American TV. That’s about to change.

The Big Three networks are all looking at telenovela projects, with preliminary plans to roll some out this summer. Their prime appeal is cost. They’re very cheap to produce, which means the networks aren’t risking much by experimenting, especially in summer when they’re only competing against reruns. But there are other reasons, including that they’ll appeal to the fast-growing segment of bilingual Latinos, while “Desperate Housewives” and other successful dramas have proved that there’s a market for sudsy entertainment in prime time.

The telenovela incursion comes at a time when Spanish TV’s clout has reached new heights. Nielsen recently began including Spanish-language shows in its rankings, showing that L.A.-based Univision is the country’s fifth-biggest network by viewership. The impressive numbers may be what prompted Univision Communications’ board last week to put the company up for sale. Its prospects -- Latinos are the nation’s largest minority group, and growing fast -- are so rosy that the network is expected to draw a bidding war and may fetch more than $13 billion.

For all that, many Latinos speak English as well or better than Spanish, or only English, and they watch English-language stations, a fact the networks have long ignored. The telenovela trend is one sign that’s changing, but not the only one. Shows such as “Freddie” and “George Lopez” on ABC and “South Beach” on UPN feature mainly Latino characters, some of whom speak only Spanish. During the Super Bowl, Toyota ran a commercial featuring a bilingual family.

This more bicultural TV is a good move for more reasons than one. Besides making good business sense for the networks, the new shows better reflect the American TV audience, which doesn’t just consist of young white people living in New York. So bring on the heaving bosoms and smoldering glances and downtrodden ingenues looking for happiness in a world that’s out to get them. The new crop of telenovelas can’t be any worse than “Joey.”