TELENOVELA WATCH: PABLO ESCOBAR, ROSA DIAMANTE Premiered; Plus, UNA MAID EN MANHATTAN, UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR & POR ELLA SOY EVA

ROSA DIAMANTE and PABLO ESCOBAR: EL PATRÓN DEL MAL premiered this week on Telemundo, two productions that could not be farther apart on the telenovela spectrum: the former, an assortment of fairly traditional telenovela story elements such as an abandoned newborn, wicked matriarch, corporate power struggle, and deep family secrets; and the latter, a big-budget docudrama about the rise and fall of a notorious cocaine trafficker.  About the only thing the two shows have in common is they both offer a welcome respite from Telemundo’s Miami studio productions which have dominated the network’s schedule this year, with ROSA filmed entirely in Mexico and PABLO mostly filmed in Colombia.

TELENOVELA WATCH: UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR Improving; Plus, OJO POR OJO

UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR (weekdays at 7 p.m. ET) is in its first couple weeks on Univision.  Joining ABISMO DE PASIÓN and LA QUE NO PODÍA AMAR, it makes for a fairly homogeneous primetime lineup of telenovelas for the network: all three are traditional, melodramatic romances, all three are remakes, all three are conventionally told, and, at least judging from the opening weeks of UN REFUGIO PARA EL AMOR, all three are largely successful due to the strength of their casts and production values which manage to gild the clichés in the stories they tell.

TELENOVELA WATCH: Compelling Debut For OJO POR OJO; New Series AMORCITO CORAZON; Plus, UNA MAID EN MANHATTAN, EMPERATRIZ & More

The first week of OJO POR OJO (Mondays-Thursdays at 11 p.m. ET on mun2) was the most compelling from a Telemundo production this year, begging the question: Why is this telenovela airing on the cable network mun2 instead of the more widely available main network?