Casseta & Planeta

Casseta & Planeta is a Brazilian group of comedians who run a TV show named "Casseta & Planeta Urgente", broadcast by Rede Globo. The humour featured on the show is mostly satirical, relating to religious or ethical groups, and minorities (Portuguese, Jewish, politicians, homosexuals, drunkards, Gaucho, natives of Bahia, Argentines, and others).

The group founded a company called "Toviassu Produções Artísticas" (Toviassu Artistic Productions), whose name is an acronym composed of syllables from the phrase "Todo viado é surdo" – "Every gay is deaf"; which is the ending of a widely known Brazilian practical joke. Each one of the seven members has a specific function within the company. They present their TV show at Rede Globo and publish a website and many books (all best-sellers), among other products, for example the "Machobol" (a parody of frescobol which is a game similar to tennis played in Brazilian beaches).

Originally a magazine named "Casseta Popular" and a humour newspaper called "O Planeta Diário" (in a nod to Clark Kent's Daily Planet), the two teams joined forces and were hired by Rede Globo to become writers for the network's comedy shows, starting with TV Pirata in 1988. A few years later, they starred in their own show.

Members

* Beto Silva
* Bussunda ("died June 17, 2006 as a victim of a heart attack, while was covering the World Cup in Germany")
* Cláudio Manuel
* Hélio de La Peña
* Hubert
* Marcelo Madureira
* Reinaldo
* Maria Paula ("sometimes considered the 8th member, at least for the TV show")

TV Pirata

In April 1988, Rede Globo premiered a new weekly comedy series on their Tuesday prime time slot called "TV Pirata" (Pirate TV). The show was written by Casseta Popular and Planeta Diario writers and consisted of a new approach in Brazilian comedy with sketches spoofing pop culture, Brazilian society and social life, "novelas" (soap operas), politics, celebrities and others with a fresh no-nonsense style of comedy (borrowing from Saturday Night Live and Monty Python's Flying Circus); This style of sketch comedy was considered fresh and groundbreaking for Brazilian audiences who weren't accostumed to such thing. The show started slow, but progressively, it became a cultural phenomenon. The program also featured dramatic actors like Debora Bloch, Marco Nanini, Claudia Raia and Ney Latorraca in comedic roles instead of the dramatic roles they usually performed. Some of the performers, however, went on to play more comedy roles later in their careers. The show ended in 1990, due to various cast changes and ratings decline; It was revived briefly in early 1992, being cancelled for good just a few months later. The TV show, however, became a cult and a landmark in Brazilian comedy as there has never been a show like it before or since.

The TV Show

"Casseta & Planeta Urgente" is probably the most popular comedy in Brazilian TV being the next generation of TV Pirata, the late 1980s comedy show on the same network. This is easy to see because it has the same style and the same cast of writers. Casseta is popular because there isn't anything that escapes from their satires. A good clue for Casseta's popularity is that their jokes are popular in the entire country.

ome current skits

* "Seu Creysson" – a man who speaks a language so botched-up and full of solecisms that is quite impossible to understand him. This is a pun on the recent tendency to lower the level of culture on TV;
* "Plantão Casseta & Planeta" – "Casseta & Planeta Breaking News", with a lot of satire and frequent use of stock or fabricated footage replacing actual events;
* "Organizações Tabajara" – a fictitious monopolist company, which makes SNL-like advertisements. It has to compete with the "Group Capivara - Seu Creysson";
* "A CPI ao vivo e se mexendo" ("Legislative Inquiry Commission (a)live and moving");
* "Novas e semi-novas anedotas do mensalão" ("New and not so new jokes from the Mensalão scandal");
* "Fucker and Sucker" – a spoof to the police shows, starred by "a pair of two double cops" from Tennessee (USA) and dubbed to Portuguese out of synchronization. Besides being a pun on bad dubbing, the show also explores the sheer differences between the way police work is carried on both in the US and in Brazil;
* "Tabajara Futebol Clube" – the worst soccer team in the world. Marrentinho Carioca and Vaca (cow in Portuguese, which is, in fact, a cow in uniform) are the team "stars". Tabajara plays a lot with the catchphrases used by footballers too;
* "Sauna Gay" – a gay sauna, led by Wanderney - who claims that he isn't gay -, along with his "partner" Peludão. In 2005, it became a cultural place, visited by famous bands, like CPM 22 and Detonautas;
* "Bost" – spoof of the popular TV series Lost. The name "Bost" is a play on the Portuguese word "bosta" (=crap) and the show's title.

There are also some satire versions of people that are known in Brazil like:

* Fátima Bernardes: Anchor of the daily news program Jornal Nacional ("Ótima Bernardes");
* Glória Maria: Anchor of Fantástico a news program broadcasted every Sunday by Rede Globo ("Chicória Maria");
* Drauzio Varella: Medical reporter of Fantastico ("Drauzio Careca");
* Marcos Valerio: Marketeer that was involved in the Mensalao Scandal ("Marcos Mensalério");
* Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva: President of Brazil. Each time Lula appears they cast him with a different surname, usually mocking something he has done recently, like, for instance "Luiz Ignorácio Lula da Silva", when he claimed that he had no knowledge of the Mensalão scandal ("Ignorância" is "ignorance" in Portuguese, and means both "lack of knowledge" and "stupidity").

It's also a trademark of Casseta & Planeta to parodize Globo's current main soap, incluinding parodies of the episodes that just have been aired in the hour before.

Other media

Casseta & Planeta also released several best-selling humorous books, a few music albums and the movies "Seus Problemas Acabaram" (2006) and "A Taça do Mundo é Nossa" ("The World Cup is Ours"), which takes places in the early 1970s, the age of the military dictatorship in Brazil.

External links

* [http://www.globo.com/cassetaeplaneta Official site]
* [http://globoesporte.globo.com/ESP/CassetaePlaneta/0,,5009,00.html Casseta com Bola e Tudo, Globo Esporte]