TELENOVELA WATCH: 'El Señor de los Cielos' Season 3, Plus, 'Dueños del Paraíso, 'La Esquina del Diablo' and 'Quiero Amarte'

Left to Right: Carmen Aub, Carmen Villalobos, Rafael Amaya, Fernanda Castillo and Sergio Mur at a private screening of the El Señor de los Cielos third season premiere.  Photo Credit: Telemundo

EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS 3
One episode in and the latest edition of Telemundo’s repugnant narco-novela EL SEÑOR DE LOS CIELOS (weeknights at 10 p.m. ET) is already circling the drain. The same shameless storytelling device that carried the second series is already back in full force: the incessant victimization of the poor little mass-murdering title drug lord with him getting beaten by prison guards, poisoned, and the delivery of a surprise head in a box. This is all set up to excuse the predictable atrocities he will later commit as justified revenge-taking. Rinse, repeat.

Rafael Amaya’s performance has long become monotonous - he mostly just poses menacingly and glares, grimacing through his lines as if it pains him to speak them. He concludes the first episode with a hilariously awful ugly-face fake cry that would make Blanca Soto proud.

Carmen Villalobos’s cop character is an afterthought at this point with the fans of the show just impatiently waiting for her to get murdered, but for them to be satisfied, it has to be at the hands of Amaya’s character and only after she is tortured.

TELENOVELA WATCH: 'La Sombra del Pasado' Premieres Tonight; Plus, 'Que te perdone Dios,' 'Tiro de Gracia,' 'Dueños del Paraíso' and 'Quién Mató a Patricia Soler?'

La Sombra del Pasado premieres tonight at 7 p.m. ET on Univision taking the place of the mercifully departed La Gata. A Mexican telenovela from Televisa, La Sombra del Pasado is a remake of the 2001 telenovela El Manantial. It is produced by MaPat L. de Zatarain who is coming off the enjoyable La mujer del Vendaval.

La Sombra del Pasado is a hacienda telenovela about neighboring ranches and an affair between the owner of one of the ranches with his neighbor’s wife that leads to a death and a deep hatred between the two families. A love then grows between the son and daughter of the feuding families.

Michelle Renaud and Pablo Lyle play the protagonists, both in their first leading roles. Renaud was the appealing pianist cousin of Ariadne Diaz’s heroine in La mujer del Vendaval and Lyle was the juvenile lead of Por Siempre Mi Amor. In that telenovela, Lyle was paired opposite Thelma Madrigal, who plays the third side of the central triangle in La Sombra and also featured in La mujer del Vendaval as the hero’s spoiled sister.

TELENOVELA WATCH: Drug-Themed Series 'Duenos del Paraiso,' 'Tiro de Gracia' and 'La Esquina del Diablo'

Kate del Castillo, José María Torre and Jorge Zabaleta star in
Telemundo super series Dueños del Paraíso.

Dueños del Paraíso
A trio of narco-novelas premiered in the US last week headlined by the highly anticipated Dueños del Paraíso (weeknights at 10 p.m. ET) on Telemundo. A co-production by Telemundo and the Chilean TVN, but mostly produced in Miami, Dueños del Paraíso marked the return of Mexican actress Kate del Castillo to Spanish language television, her first telenovela since La Reina del Sur in 2011, the only genuine hit in Telemundo’s history and, for its first half at least, the best production to come from the network. Any hopes for another La Reina del Sur dissipate in the opening minutes of Dueños del Paraíso – it’s a clunker: boring and clichéd with contrived, lazy plotting and amateurish direction.

Dueños del Paraíso opens with the heroine’s voice over saying, “There are no good guys or bad guys, no heroes or villains,” already a lie as the next hour proceeds through melodramatic devices to tell the audience exactly who the “good guys” and “bad guys” are going to be in this story.

Anastasia Cardona, the heroine portrayed by Kate del Castillo, is given an absolving sob story in the opening scene when her long-absent mother arrives at her birthday party (really, an old woman is able to waltz uninvited into the birthday party of a drug lord’s wife) and it’s revealed she was a prostitute who abandoned Anastasia. Talk about lazy writing – there is nothing organic or believable in the scene, no reason we should care about these women whose names we’ve literally just learned a few minutes earlier, no reason except one is played by Kate del Castillo who we know is the star and needs to be fed constant opportunities to remind everyone she’s an actress. Anastasia Cardona isn’t a character, she’s an actress reel.