Bienvenidos

"Bienvenidos" "(Spanish for "welcome")" is a popular sketch comedy television show from Venezuela. Produced and hosted by Miguel Angel Landa, the show was produced by Venevision since 1982. It has been taped both at Venevision's studios and on location across Venezuela.

Aired weekly, it consists of 20 to 25 comic sketches that usually take on couples, homosexuals, doctors and other members of society as the target of their jokes. Most of the sketches have a sexual edge to them.

Some of the most popular characters on the show include:

* "El Loco Hugo" (Koke Corona), a lunatic who likes to flash women
* "Manolo," (Gustavo Gonzalez) the Spaniard
* "Rigoberto" (Koke Corona), who has the mentality of a 10 year-old-boy and whose "wives" always cheat on him, to which he invariably screams, "Tu no me quieres!" ("You don't love me!")
* "Enrico" (Ernesto Cortez), a gay character that occasionally starts out masculine, but then behaves effeminately and his voice is altered in pitch
* "Briagoberto," (Gustavo Gonzalez) a perpetually drunk man
* "Nino Frescobaldi" (Julio Gassette)

Some of the show's more well-known sketches are:

"Ay, Mama": The general idea of the sketch is somebody will make some kind of embarrassing gaffe, to which they will utter, "Ay, Mama!"El Chiste Incomprensible (The incomprehensible Joke)"

Among the many comedians in this show are Landa's daughther Dayana, Ernesto Cortez and María Antonieta Duque. She and Cortez ended up marrying in real life, but they later separated.

"Bienvenidos" is shown on networks throughout the Spanish-speaking world. One of those networks was Univision in the United States, which carried the program during the 1990s. Its Galavision channel currently carries repeats of the program.

Venevision Home Entertainment has released several themed collections of sketches from the show on DVD. The titles are:
Bienvenidos en la playa (Bienvenidos on the Beach)
Bienvenidos en la alcoba (Bienvenidos in the Bedroom)
Bienvenidos en el restaurante (Bienvenidos in the Restaurant)
Lo mejor de Bienvenidos: Sus Personajes (The Best of Bienvenidos: The Characters)
Bienvenidos en la oficina (Bienvenidos at the Office)

Each title is hosted by Maria Antonieta Duque.

"Bienvenidos" is similar in format to a Canadian sketch comedy, "You Can't Do That on Television".